[Bordermarch] Granny's Purse

[Lathrop, Dave]

Greetings Bordermarch,

Here's the situation;

I'm standing at the back of the lecture hall which is crowded to the max with fellow SCA'ers listening to our Kingdom Officers give their reports to the audience. With me were; Lord Adolf, Lady Padragin, Lord Zane, Lord Brand Eric, and my Lady HE Elisabeth. All of the above mentioned were standing as one cohesive unit representing Barony Bordermarch, all except HE Elisabeth. She decided to garner attention by sitting on the lecture hall's stairs right in front of Their Royal Majesties.
As our new Kingdom Seneschal was giving her report a cell phone started to ring, I knew that ring tone immediately, it was HE Elisabeth's!
Since the ring tone is quite loud and annoying in the first place, all heads in the room turned, I saw many scowling faces looking in our direction.
The ringing continued with none attempting to squelch it's desperate cry for attention.
I knew my Lady didn't have her phone with her so I followed the disgruntled gazes of the audience. My eyes finally settled on the location of the offending noise that was interrupting the whole room. It was coming from HE Elisabeth's purse that her grandmother had gifted to her many years ago. The purse had been knitted from the multicolored  fibers of the Northern Rhubarb.  It resembles the flannel nightgown my Lady wore on our wedding night.
I then realized that the folks near the purse were turning in circles waving their arms and hands in the air. Their mouths were flapping open then closed, looking like a school of frightened guppy fish . They were none other the Lord Adolf, Lord Brand Eric, and Lord Zane, one and all mighty Bordermarch warriors. Lady Padragin remained seated on the table that supported the monster that kept spitting out that hip-hop-smooth-jazzy sounding ring tone. She did nothing but lower head and cover it with her arms.
I could not believe what I was seeing, no one was trying to get the phone from the purse to silence it! Since I was the furthest from the purse, I thought for sure someone would act, but Nooooooo!
I realized then and there, in one spilt second, that my fellow Bordermarchers were petrified into a state of just plain stupid!
I could read it written on their faces, "Oh Gosh! What are we going to do, What are we going to do!" "Let's run around in circles with our eyes bugged out of our heads, flapping our jaws, maybe someone will help us!!"
I pointed to the purse and tried to get one of them to simply reach in and silence the phone, but they were beyond reason. It would be up to me to squeeze past Lady Padragin while she sat on the table swinging her legs like great pendulums, and rocking back and forth with her head covered.
I made it past Lady Paddy Whack, but then I had to reach around and through the  gyrating group of  Bordermarchers who were just then beginning to drool spittle from the corner of their mouths.
I finally grabbed for HE Elisabeth's purse and made one feeble attempt to extract her phone; I failed. Her phone is always buried in some deep hidden pocket in her purse, I knew better than to try to get at it, but the pressure was all on me!
The phone kept ringing, the looks from the crowd were getting uglier, and all of my companions had turned to jelly.
I grabbed up the whole purse, tucked it under my arm, then stiff-armed my way towards the exit. I made it out of the room and ended up right in front of HE William, Baron of Loch Soilleir, sitting on a bench with a perplexed look on his face.
I had no time to explain my situation, I tore into HE Elisabeth's purse and finally found her ringing phone. Just as I was about to extract it, it stopped ringing! I turned it completely off then tried to reenter the lecture hall; the door was locked. When I gently knocked none would exert the energy to open it for me.
I ended up on the other side of the lecture hall, far from my fellow Bordermarchers who looked appropriately ashamed for their lack of action.
I had to stand for the rest of the event with my Ladies hand-me-down knitted purse in my hands. Since it wouldn't fit in my pants, I held it behind me trying to convince myself that no one would notice.
When all was said and done, and everyone was leaving the lecture hall, I noticed people casting knowing smiles in my direction. I found out later that some caddy comments were made as I was bolting from the room with the purse under my arm.
I don't recall any of those comments, but what I remember most vividly is the vision of HE Elisabeth sitting on the lecture hall's stairs looking up at me with those big doe-eyes as I whizzed past. We locked eyes just before she ducked down behind the others on the stairs. She didn't utter a sound, but her mouth most certainly formed the oval shape attributed the Latin word meaning --"OOPS."


HE Santiago