Magic Moments

[dennis grace]

Aquilanne here.

Sir Burke asked for magic moments. I started in the SCA in
Montana/Atenveldt, in the eternally-incipient shire of Braanshelm (Billings,
MT), way, way out in the SCA boonies. I had only been playing a few months
when a bunch of us carpooled to a fighter's college in Silver Keep
(Bozeman). Some knights and other charity-minded folk from the Barony of
Loch Salaan (Salt Lake City, Utah) had traveled up to teach and share. The
event was held in the upstairs area of a school gym--fighting, feast,
festivities and all. It was the first event I'd been to where there was
dancing. They got the dancers started with a simple pavan. I was standing to
the side, watching, when I was approached by a tall, stately gentleman
wearing a (gasp, nervous figit) coronet, the first I had ever seen. I bowed,
and moved to let him by, but, low and behold, he stopped, bowed back, took
my hand and asked oh-so-politely if I would honor him with a dance. I was
absolutely agog. The *Baron* asked *me,* a "nobody," to dance! We shared a
pavan, bowed to one another again; he conversed pleasantly with me for a
little while and went on. I still remember how absolutely charmed and
excited I was to be asked to dance by someone so important and so genteel.
Years later, Baron Sir Robert de Spencer still stands in my mind as a
paragon of nobility. In that shining moment, so young into the SCA
experience, I was no longer a "nobody;" I *was* a lady at court, fortunate
enough to have had the Baron's arm for a dance.

As proficient as I like to believe myself at communication, mere words can't
begin to do justice to the magic of that moment for me.
_____________________________
Dennis Grace
University of Texas at Austin
English Department
Recovering Medievalist
amazing at mail.utexas.edu

Things are more like they are today than they have ever been before.
                                                  --Dwight D. Eisenhower

(Don't Republicans say just the cutest things?)