Is 32 too old to go "emo"?

Fourteen years ago, I fell in love with a vampire.  Brad Pitt stole my heart in the movie version of "Interview With A Vampire" - and I was hooked.  I could still probably recite the entire film.  

A few years later, I began reading the Anne Rice books and found myself immersed within worlds of witches and vampires - living so well amongst the rest of the world.  I read every book she wrote - and I think owned them all too.  I'm still regretting the fact that a few of those books got sold in a yard sale just prior to my moving to Illinois.  

However, they were in that yard sale for a reason.  I'd outgrown such romantic fantasies as vampires and I was a much more practical adult moving on with her life.  Those that didn't sell got packed up with the rest of my books - those that did, I hope they bring joy to whomever is reading them now.  

I'm too much of a grown up to be pulled into such wonderfully fictitious worlds.  

A few months ago I started seeing all these mentions of "Twilight" scattered around Facebook.  Ah, the next teenage girl thing, I thought.  A movie based on a young adult book - yeah, there's such a dearth of those.  

Then the buzz reached some of the undergraduates I know.  Okay - they're still fairly young, though, right?  I'm above such things.

Then the buzz landed on a friend, older than me, in an administrator position.  She lent me her copy - which landed in a pile of books that "I'll get to when I have the time."  It sat there.

Twilight, the movie, was released on Friday to scores of lines and sold out theatres.  By now, I knew it was a teen vampire flick; the book remained unread, unopened, now in a box that moved with us into our new home.  

I agreed to succumb to the hype to watch the movie 

- vampires can be a pleasant distraction, right?  

Saturday show, 4:00 pm.  Lots of previews and then....

It's now 4:03 on Sunday afternoon.  Exactly 24 hours ago, I was settling in to my seat at the movie theatre, about to watch a fun vampire movie.  In the past 24 hours, I've watched the movie, read the entire first book, dreamed of my own personal vampire, and become obsessed with the book's main character.  I won't run to the movies practically every night for the next three weeks (okay, yes, I MAY have done that with Interview With A Vampire) - but I'm anxiously awaiting the movie's release onto dvd and I may allow Alex to see the movie (so I can watch it again).  I am, however, jonesing for the second book...

So how is it that this movie has thrown me with such vehemence back into my vampire lust of ten years ago?  The book is excellent, I think.  While the story is centered around the angst that is adolescence, I think the writing is more compelling than I remember Rice's series.  

My solution to my obsession?  

Well, I want to read read read - which I don't really have a problem with.  

And then shrug and embrace it.  

Since the only other option is to dye my hair black and attain a level of "emo" that I would never have even reached at the peak of my emotional youth, I'm already practicing my shrug.