People who set out to ruin a story for someone else are right up there with people who like to ruin Christmas for children. How malicious is it–you’re enjoying something I don’t approve of so zap! take that enthusiastic person! ha-ha, you’re upset and I feel so much better.

Rumor has it that a restaurant here in town plans to put a Harry Potter spoiler on their marquee this Saturday. Apparently they did the same for book six. Now, it hardly matters if they like the series. I don’t care if they like it. I just fail to grasp the outlook on life these people have to purposely ruin innocent fun for others.

When I was in Eastern Europe in the 90s, I met some local people who were really into the American television series Dallas. As luck would have, the big story in town was “who shot JR.” Now, I might have thought the show was silly and out-of-date and I might have laughed at JR speaking a slavic language, but I had enough good grace not to blurt out the shooter’s name and ruin the surprise.

What is it about a story that makes people say,”No, don’t ruin it for me!” I mean, if you haven’t seen or read these stories, you wouldn’t want me to say without any warning, “Hey, the singer in The Crying Game is…and the little girl in Pan’s Labyrinth gets…and the father in The Golden Compass does…”

Too many people confuse being clever with being mean-spirited.

And (sorry, but the proverbial bee is zipping from my bonnet to my shoes right now–egad! I might be enthusiastic!) apparently in the world today enthusiasm in anyone over the age of five must be stopped. I see this with my students (none of whom are American by the way). Some of them act like they would rather be dragged over a field of fire ants that express any enthusiasm or passion for anything. Honestly I can’t tell if they are afraid to or if they just don’t have any interests to get worked up over. Granted, such passion can go too far–people with religious fervor really ought to leave the rest of us alone–but there has to that happy medium. Wait. Can passion have a happy medium? Can it be in the middle? I don’t know and this rant is getting beyond me.

I can only hope that as a writer I can one day create a character that people care about half as much as they care about Harry Potter. Imagine–people waiting in lines and wringing their hands over someone who doesn’t exist! I think that’s great.