[NR] Memories, apologies, wishes, and a challenge

[Ulf Gunnarsson]

And Chandra said:
> There exist those who are having fun in the SCA.
>
> We are not few.
>
> We are not even particularly stoic.  (Stoic fun being hard for even me to
> imagine.)

Hear, hear. The Barony of Namron is having a *blast*.  Folks are camping
together, and singing together, and eating together, and fighting one
another (but only on the list field).  And we did it without even using
Uncle Abdul's Marvelous Mystery Ointment! :)

We used an age old method.  We decided to have fun, instead.

It took a while.  Friends had to help friends, keeping each other from
gossiping, finding good things to say about others, shrugging off things
that normally make you wince.  Before long, people were working together
that never really spent much time with one another.  They found new friends
that had been standing by them all this time.  But, boy, was it hard.
Everyone had to be strong about not putting up with any malicious gossip,
and had to be serious about tracking down the sources.  The hardest things
were to not believe stuff just because your friend had told you they were
so.  In the end, though, people found it hard to say things that weren't
true, because everyone became very conscious of the rumor mill effect.

So in order to fill the gulf that politics used to occupy, we had to find
something else.  We all remembered how much fun we used to have before we
got caught up in our politics, as all too many of us do.  So we turned to
that.  Not to "recreate" those days; heck, I don't have the stamina for
that.  I actually go to bed before dawn now.  No, we are trying to remember
all the attitudes of expectation and discovery that we had back then.  The
SCA was new to us, the kingdom was a shining dream we had been searching
for, and the chance to put on funny clothes and do odd things was more
important to us than watching TV.

Things were NOT better in the old days.  We just hadn't gotten ourselves
caught up in the politics, nor seen arguments on the list field, nor had our
friends get hurt in relationships, nor seen... etc.  Insert your list here.
All that kind of stuff *was* going on in the "good old days".  We were just
... well... immune to it.  We hadn't bought in to it yet, so it didn't have
any effect on us.  Recapture that, and you will join the happy multitudes of
people out there that are still having fun.

Be immune.  Don't let someone else trap you in their game.  Invite them into
yours.  And savor the scintillating effect where the two overlap.  Yes, we
will probably still have some occasional problems.  We are all very
beautiful models of imperfection.  But we will get through those problems,
if for no other reason than because we want to.

And if you've read through this entire long post and still don't know what
I'm talking about, come down to Namron and we'll show you.

Baron Ulf, Namron
(and the answer to today's riddle is 'spooge')