A reason to be happy No. 1

Last night my 11-year-old Maggie and I snuck off to the the midnight premiere of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows--" only to discover the theater's website didn't know how to tell time. It advertised the Thursday November 18th midnight showing -- not realizing that after midnight, it's really Friday. We showed up at 10 p.m. Wednesday and met some serious Potter fans camping out on the sidewalks. Movie-goers dressed in Hogwarts robes and snuggled up in heavy blue sleeping bags lined the side of the building. A life-sized cut out of Dumbledore marked their territory.

"Are you here for Harry Potter?" a Hermione Granger look-a-like asked.

"Yeah, I brought my daughter-- thought I'd let her go in late to school," I said.

"Wow! You are one cool mom!" she said.

Suddenly many would-be wizards wanted to shake my hand.

My daughter and I sat under a park light and read while waiting for showtime.

When security tried to kick us out of the parking lot at 11:30 p.m., I started to get suspicious and then I looked at my ticket (Friday 12:06 p.m.). There was no way I was going to let my 11-year-old daughter camp out in a parking lot in the freezing cold November weather. All we had was a thin quilt and --s he had school tomorrow.

"What?! Security is going to kick us out?!" I asked 'outraged at the injustice.'

"It happens every time," said a college-age man as he put away his life-size cut out of Dumbledore.

"Well-- that--sucks," I said still trying to maintain a semblance of cool. "What are you all going to do?"

"I guess we'll find a place to hang out," he said.

"Maggie!" I shouted. "We're going to have to leave. They're kicking us out. . . What time are you coming back?"

"I don't know? Six? That's when the parking lot opens," he said. "We'll hold your spot. This isn't a very good part of town. Don't worry. We saw you all here. Come back later."

A sigh of relief. I was still "the cool mom." I tossed my daughter into the car.

"Can you believe it the movie's website doesn't know how to tell time?" I said. "Well, we'll just have to come back after school."

"Mom, do I still get to go in late?" Maggie asked.

"Absolutely not," I said. "I can't have you going in late two days in a row, so when we gate home, You better shut those eyes and concentrate on sleep."

Just to be sure that I wasn't nuts, my daughter and I looked over the theater's Website. Yep, it still advertised the Thursday Nov. 18 midnight showings. I wasn't crazy.

And I was strangely giddy. Why? Because my daughter and I had created a memory-- we'd had an adventure-- and I was the cool Mom (that never hurts).