Peer Fear (was: Re: Peerage Stuff Re: Why I Hate Fencin

[Jeanne C. Stapleton]

> I used to be pretty nervous around peers and nobility. However, bit
> by bit most of my friends BECAME peers and nobility, so I'm getting
> over it!  :) I had a five year layout in the SCA due to mundanities,
> and when I came back, many of my old friends had become peers,
> especially laurels. I kinda get a kick out of seeing some of their
> stuff and saying, "Geeze, I taught her how to do that!"
> 
This became the case with me, as well.  anyone else move through
the SCA with the "graduating class" method?  In the set at the 
college
where I first became really active (although I was already a member),
we had the person who got the first peerage and the person who's
probably gotten the last peerage (although never say never!); I was
the first (and only thus far) to achieve a Crown; we had about seven
people become kingdom officers at one time or another.

For a while, it seemed that whenever I'd leave an area, a whole wave 
of my friends would receive peerages.  This was definitely not a case 
of sucking up on either side; everyone likes to feel that their 
freinds are the best, the cleverest, the most effective (or else why 
would we be friends with them?).  Well, in my case, I really feel 
there's justification for this attitude!  :-)  I've made friends with 
little clusters of people who weren't peers when I first knew them, 
but got there.

> Now, I only get nervous around peers/nobility that I don't know, and
> that's more a fear of strangers than the fact that they are peers.
> (I think).
> 
Could be.  I wonder at the number of shy people in the sCa.  I'm not
really shy myself, so it's always a difficult phenomenon to 
understand
why people come to a group activity when people make them...what?
Nervous?  Scared?  Suspicious?  Uncomfortable?

Countess Berengaria de Montfort de Carcassonne, OP
Barony of Caerthe
Kingdom of the Outlands