Actual Children’s Answers to The Question “What Is Love?”

“Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.” - Chrissy, age 6

“Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.” - Terri, age 4

“Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.” - Danny, age 7

“Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss.” - Emily, age 8

“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.” - Bobby, age 7

“If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,” - Nikka, age 6

“Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.” - Noelle, age 7

“Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.” - Tommy, age 6

“During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.” - Cindy, age 8

“My mommy loves me more than anybody. You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.” - Clare, age 6

“Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.” - Elaine, age 5

“Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Brad Pitt.” - Chris, age 7

“Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.” - Mary Ann, age 4

“I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.” - Lauren, age 4

“When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.” - Rebecca, age 8

“When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.” - Karen, age 7

“You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.” - Jessica, age 8

Creativity Please

Do you ever get the feeling that you are need to do something creative RIGHT NOW but then you have no idea what to do? Yeah, I'm at that point.

I have so many writing projects in my head, but I honestly haven't written anything for so long - probably this summer - that I don't even really know where to start. It's so maddening. I just want to create and mold things with my mind for days and days and days. I think I need to stop thinking so much, and stop putting so much pressure on myself and just do it. Easier said than done, though.

RIP Pat

I just found out that one of my childhood friends grandfathers passed away last week from lung cancer. He was 78. Its hard to explain my relationship with him, but I spent a lot of time with him when I was little. I would be at his place so much to play with Lindsay or Michelle when I was at my grandma's in the summer time. I haven't seen him for years, and I'm kind of surprised at how emotional I am over this. I just about started to cry when I was on the phone with my mom and she told me. I think part of it is the fact that he was very much a grandfatherly figure for me when I was little, and it's bringing back all of the emotion I  had when Papa passed away. And the fact that I know so many people who have died from cancer.

I am so thankful, though, that he didn't suffer. He didn't even know he had lung cancer, so he didn't have to go through chemo or radiation or anything. I am so very very thankful for that. And he had a good life.

RIP Pat.

Thoughts From Places: Imagining People Complexly

I went to Edmonton with my brother today to pick up his new car, so driving home by myself gave me quite a lot of time to think. That's one thing I really love about long drives by myself - I always think about a lot of things. Which may not be good because I should be paying attention to the road, but anyway. I was listening to "Looking for Alaska" by Hank Green, which got me thinking about John Green (obviously) which always seems to lead me to "imagine people complexly" for some reason. I don't know why. But it does. And I just started to think about how that was all well and great to say, but it's a hell of a difficult thing to do in practice. I learned that the hard way the past month or so. I had it in my head that a boy was a different person than he was, and because of that, I ended up getting hurt. My own damned fault. Now, if I had just imagined him complexly all of that could have been avoided, no?

Masterful Musician

I played my violin today for the first time in a long time, and I can't believe how much I missed it. I played it for a full two hours straight. It was so amazing. I don't know how my fingers don't have huge crevices in them from the strings, and I don't know how they don't ache and aren't black from the strings. (I have a minor allergy to the violin strings and it turns my fingers black. Or something like that.) But they are completely unblemished, and it is fantastic.

It's so strange, because I haven't been playing because I've been so busy, and my string broke and I don't like playing when people will hear me. But I bought strings today, and I had nothing to do, and I suddenly just didn't care if my roommates and neighbour heard me. I just played. And Kayla and Elise may have started applauding while I was playing, which was funny and slightly embarrassing at the same time. But you know, that's life.

It's made me really nostalgic. I've been thinking about my violin group from High School since, and the String Quartet group, and I suddenly really miss those days. Which is weird, because I usually never ever ever miss High School, but now I suddenly do.

(Also, because I'm on the topic of music - if you haven't heard Mumford & Sons before, go and check them out. Now. Because they are brilliant.)

Fandom Memories: The HP Fan Community

I don't know if any of you are subscribed the LeakyCon YouTube channel or not, but they've been doing interactive-type videos where they choose a topic and their subscribers send in responses, and this time, it's about the fan community itself. You can watch the video here with Mr. Andrew Sims, but in the mean time, this is my story of how I got involved with the fandom.

I first got into the Harry Potter books on summer vacation around the third grade, I think. My best friend at the time and I were camping with my parents, and she brought the first two books with her. She read me a passage from Chamber of Secrets, and I was instantly hooked. I don't remember when I bought the first book, but I do remember buying the fourth in fifth or sixth grade at a book fair. I think that was probably when the obsession really started, because it's the first memory of me buying something Potter related. After that, I remember lots of Harry Potter stuff - I remember begging my parents to let me get a Potter bookmark drawn by Mary Grandpre, and standing in line to one of the movies, wishing more than anything that Potter was real. I remember going into town with my brother to buy Order of the Pheonix and sitting in the house all day to read it. I remember checking MuggleNet multiple times a day to see any news about when Half-Blood Prince would get released. I remember the first time I heard of Harry and the Potters. I remember listening to Mugglecast episodes, and then adding Pottercast to my podcasts. That's when I started to go to Leaky more than Mugglenet. Pottercast is also where I heard about Nerdfighteria for the first time. I remember being introduced to the Ministry of Magic by my friend Carly in December 2007 and becoming instantly obsessed with wrock. I remember signing up to be part of the Harry Potter Alliance, which was ultimately how I mostly became part of the community.

Before that, I had wanted to be part of the community so badly, but I didn't know how. I joined MyLeaky, and met some of my first Potter friends there. I got to know them over Twitter, which I signed up for because of Tom Felton and Matt Lewis, and from them I met Kenz and Slyvie and Joella, which led me to our brief collaboration channel on YouTube, Back4theFight. It was brief, but through it I met and became friends with Kenz, Sylvie, Joella, Mickey, Maddie and Sarah. This was December 2009, and it was the first time I could say I actually had friends in the fandom.

From there, I got more active with the HPA, and as I said, started to make friends on the HPA Ning. My activity on the Ning was sporadic, though, so I didn't really meet any other people until I became a staffer at the HPA, which instantly introduced me to so many more amazing people. I had wanted to be a staffer since the summer of 2009, and applied then, though I didn't actually get "hired" until February 2010. I felt may way around the HPA, and started to get to know the other staffers. I especially met a lot of people during 2010's Accio Books, when I was one of the Prefects for Hufflepuff House, and it's all grown from there.

The people at Leaky want us to have short snippets about how we got involved with the community, but I don't think I could, my journey into the fandom was so long. So, this isn't an actual submission, but this is my fandom story. I can't wait for LeakyCon when I get to meet so many of my friends, and hopefully meet new ones. :D 129 Days.