A Preface to Lunch Quidditch The ultimate fantasy sport

Author: James O'Brien

Why are people so divided on the subject of breakfast for dinner (BFD)? What's not to like? BFD provides pancakes of various pancake flavors, which are somehow far superior to their regular pancake counterparts that we usually eat for breakfast. I'm not sure whether this is due to a finer batter used at BFD, or maybe the fact that I'm awake enough to enjoy the taste. Either way, the pancakes are wonderful, and they come with three choices of eggs - normal, Western, and some other kind that I can't remember. Three types of scrambled eggs! And a smoothie bar! What's not to like? We must stop this breakfast for dinner prejudice.

Breakfast is venturing out of its comfort zone, sacrificing its own complacency in order to give us a little variety in our lives, and all some of us can do is complain and go to another dining hall while our friend James would really like us to stay and eat with him because he likes BFD. Plus, breakfast for dinner definitely beats the idea of dinner for breakfast.

Or at least I'd imagine so. Nothing sounds worse than having lemon-crusted tilapia at 7 am, then washing it down with a cup of Banana Cumquat Explosion Surprise, or one of those other weird flavored coffees we have in the dining halls now.

I joke about it, but I'm suckered into drinking that one weird available flavor every time I eat. One of the recent flavored coffees actually had the word "crunch" in it (it was called "Maple-Nut Crunch" or something like that). I forget how it tasted because the entire time I was drinking it, I was wondering when the crunch part was going to kick in. I'm a sucker. If coffee had intentionally disgusting flavors like Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. Speaking of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, I'd like to awkwardly segue into the topic of Middlebury Quidditch, which is in no way related to breakfast for dinner. I can't write 700 words about breakfast for dinner. Deal with it.

Quidditch is a most postmodern of sport. It's just the sort of ironic, self-aware game that someone who does not typically follow sports is looking for. First, you have the players, who are composed of Harry Potter fans, their friends who didn't have much to do, and high school athletes who would like to feel good about themselves instead of getting their butts kicked in IM football (for those of you keeping score, I'm in this category). The players treat the game as if it is a sport, in the way sport is traditionally defined. At the same time, since they are wearing capes, there is a certain degree of understanding on the part of the players that the game is not life and death.

Meanwhile, the fans do not treat quidditch like a traditional sport either. Fans of traditional sports treat their teams as though their games are more serious than life itself. Quidditch fans, on the other hand, have no such delusions, as they can plainly see that they are watching kids with brooms between their legs.

Quidditch is not a sport that takes itself seriously, because even the people who play it aren't quite sure if it's a sport or not; and no matter the mindset of the players on the field, those there to watch are more entertained by the hilarity and relative absurdity of the game itself than getting caught up in who is "winning" and "losing."

This weekend's Quidditch World Cup was an undeniable success, due mostly to Commissioner Alex Benepe's persistence and dedication. This whole story is not about the game of quidditch itself, but of Middlebury college students' ability to take words on a page of a book and somehow transform them into hundreds of spectators watching 14 teams from all over the country - many of whom were picked toward the end of the line on the elementary school playground - run around on Battell Beach like wayward peacocks escaping from the zoo. There were more than 100,000 hits on the collegequidditch.com Web site. To watch peacocks!

Yes, I would say that there is something sort of magical about that.