#3 - On the Midnight Release of Stephanie Meyer's Book "Breaking Dawn" at a Barnes & Noble in Bethesda

The Book Release as an Event. I have only been to two of these before, each one being a Harry Potter release. I was curious to see how tonight's gathering would go as I have little to no interest in the book and had no idea how popular it was exactly. Would the evening have the crackling nerdish energy of the HP release parties? Would it bring together all nerds, great and small, huddling in the aisles of the local large chain bookstore?
As I drove around the store I noted that it did not seem as busy as the HP releases that I had been to. There no line snaking its way out of the mouth of the store and onto the sidewalk outside. It seemed to be quite a regular night. Then Mandi pointed to the second floor and that is where I saw THE DANCING.
This almost made us reconsider going inside to get the book. Thankfully we powered through our feelings of what-can-only-be-called shame and entered the store. It really was just like any other night in the week save for the top floor which was filled with all teenaged girls dressed in black and red in charmingly ramshackle approximations of the "hot vampire" aesthetic. A good 0% achieved the look successfully and unlike the Harry Potter nights, there were probably 1 or 2 males in attendance. This is including me. I surprised myself by being less annoyed at all the teenagers and more quaintly amused. How could I be mad at a bunch of kids who were excited by a book (however lame that book may be)? Still, the fiasco was contained to small hotspots in the store. People took prom style photos for some odd reason. The aforementioned dancing. Each activity was altogether lame and yet adorably charming. It made me question every single time I thought I may have felt cool as a teen. But then it made me embrace those moments because weren't we all just trying to become people back then?
The actual waiting for the book was disappointingly easy. I vaguely craved a near apocalyptic struggle between order and chaos to ensue. What I got was more a strange prom-like dance between order and chaos, where order and chaos stay pressed to the walls, afraid to dance with one another. The line made no sense to me, yet it moved along fine and before long I was outside the store and Mandi had her book. It wasn't great, but it wasn't as dreadful as it could have been. If I was forced to, for some reason, endure it alone however, that place would have gone up in flames.
Grade: B-
-Ben