It all started September, 1999, but I remember it like it was yesterday..... My 4th grade Gifted teacher, Mrs.Torres (god bless her) told us about several books that we were going to be reading with her. The Secret Garden, a classic, sounds pretty good. Silverwing, ooh, I like the sound of it. Harry Potter, huh? What kind of a name is Harry Potter? Sounds really dorky.... How very wrong I was....
Well, I bought the required books. Harry Potter was going to be the first one we read, so I read the summary on the back. A kid wizard? I thought to myself. Riiiiiiight.... I had never read a fantasy book before that. I considered them stupid. Now, I like to spend free time in the Sci Fi section at Barnes and Nobles.
We read the first chapter in class. I was like, huh? I didn't get it.... Homework: Read Ch.2. I did. A snake escapes from the zoo. How did that happen? Interesting, nonetheless....
As I kept reading the book, I liked it increasingly more and more and more. I read it at home, and soon, I was finished while the rest of the class was still mumbling about how boring the book was. The only people in the whole entire fourth grade gifted group who liked the book were me and a kid named Ernie. When I finished SS, I asked Mrs. Torres if I could borrow her copy of CoS during free time and that night I owned my own hardcover copy. That summer I read the fourth book, which my dad bought for me when it came out, but I didn't read PoA until 6th grade.
My Potter-mania, however, didn't start until sometime around the beginning of fifth grade, when I had read the books at least twice each. By now, I've read the first four at least 10 times each and I'm reading OotP for the fourth time.
Also, I still have the receipt from when I bought the first book, and I'm very close to framing it and hanging it on the living room wall....