I like to take a look at what people are reading on the bus.
Sometimes they’re looking at newspapers, or magazines, or they’re hand (which I’m assuming they’ve got a phone or something down there…at least I hope so).
Over the years every other person had their noses buried in books by John Grisham or Tom Clancy; sometimes I didn’t notice the title because all I saw were those little stickers that proclaimed this work an “Oprah “book.
Without exception I saw that the people who were reading those books looked grim and withdrawn. Their mouths were set in hard lines and when their stop came up they’d take their book jam a marker into place and bury their book in a backpack or purse or briefcase.
Their gestures were clinical and thoughtless.
Unless you’re like me and made it a point to notice what people were reading you wouldn’t know. These books were something that Commuters ‘did’ on the way to work and when they were done commuting they were done with the book.
Of course, Harry Potter changed all of that.
When these people read the Potter books they’re leaning into the book, their faces are animated and when their stop comes up they carefully pop a marker into place and they carry their book under their arms close to themselves.
So today I thought, really, all theories aside what is it about a kid studying magic that really interests us?
And then I thought about my kids and how they used to demand “A Story “at bedtime.
“What kind of story?” I used to ask.
And my kids would say, “A good one.”
This is the kind of story my kids considered “good “and the ones I liked to tell:
We liked stories about good guys who win, about people who are fair, about friends that are loyal and stories where you get the chance to have that moment where you can be the person you know that you really are.
When I’d finish they’d look up and say, ” now that’s a story…a good one.”
Like my kids I think that a lot of us want stories about underdogs that become heroes and heroes that we discover are just people- just like us.
So I’m wondering, why is it now that all of the sudden these themes are finding their way into our everyday lives and hands of people waiting for a bus or sitting in a park or waiting in offices. Why do we crave these stories about a kid who studies magic when a few years ago Attorneys and CIA agents and women who were in ‘search of themselves’ were all the rage and we were perfectly willing to lose ourselves in their lives.
Their lives.
I think I know part of the answer now- and it’s been there all along.
We want a story about heroes and fairness and friendship.
It’s a good story- isn’t it?
Irregular Bones 
