[Ansteorra] Query...

[Theron Bretz]

> So...why did you join and why do you stay in the SCA?

I first heard of the SCA when I was 14 or 15, reading L. Sprague de Camp's
"The Blade of Conan", a collection of stories and articles from "Amra" (a
Conan fanzine from the 60s).  One of the articles was by Poul Anderson and
entitled "Richard the Lionhearted is Alive, Well, and Living in the
Twentieth Century", which gave a snapshot of the SCA circa AS 5 or 6.  The
notion of people putting on armour and playing knight was too cool to put
away and colored much of my free time for the next few years as I improvised
highly dangerous weapons and somehow avoided killing my brothers with them.

I finally found the Society just before TYC, and my first event was the
Crown Tourney in Emerald Keep that Inman won for Drusilla.  I got horribly
ill from heat-prostration (the hole-in-the-ground toilets didn't help
either - another thing I don't miss about the old days), got better, watched
the tournament (which was held on a Sunday) and resolved to keep doing it.

Why do I stay is sometimes a tougher question.  With job, family, mortgage,
a nascent writing career (very nascent, barely there at all, really), and
other interests, making time for the Society is something I have to do
consciously.  My reasons for sticking around change depending on a number of
factors:  a sense of obligation and "giving back", a desire to teach, the
joy of fighting in a tournament, sheer inertia.    Often times, Bia and I
find that one or the other is more fired up about the Society than the other
and that helps to keep things going.

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't think once in a while about how much
easier things would be if I gave it up until the kid gets older.  But I know
that if I did, I probably would keep finding reasons not to play, so I stick
around.

Luciano