“In life, there are a few acceptable
fibs that I figure God provides for us as a free pass. One of them is
the answer you may give to a friend who is asking for help in a move.
For example; “Hey, are you available next Saturday to help me move?”
Anyone who helps a fellow SCAdian move is usually in for a very healthy
workout, or must answer thusly. “Gee, I’m having my pineal gland removed
that day…so terribly sorry.” But, because we like our friends, we
volunteer anyway.
{Just FYI- Other “free pass” questions include, “Does this make me look
fat?” or “So, what do you think of my poetry/singing/cooking?”}
While no towering specimen of physicality myself, my years in the Marine
Corps have somehow marked me invisibly. Somewhere floating over my head
is a sign that says the person below is not real bright, can lift heavy
things, and follows orders well. But, when you help friends move, you
can learn a lot about them! One thing I’ve noticed so far is that we
SCAdians tend to be an eclectic lot, and boy, do we love our books.
While you are loading and moving (and drooling over) their books, you
often make notes about what they have, and what you have. “Got that, got
that…Oooh! Oooh!” One thing I’ve noticed in our communal literary
zeitgeist are the large assortment of books about time travel/alternate
time lines/end-of-days genres.
These time traveling genre novels
tend to skew two different ways. Either a person from our present time
heads into the past (ala “Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”),
or, something happens to throw us into an alternate time line, such |
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as “suddenly, it’s the end of the
world, guns and electricity aren’t working any more, weelcome to the
‘new really, really Dark Ages’.” This has been an idea tossed around in
the SCA for years. The song “Serious Steel” by Leslie Fish has been
around longer than some of our Knights, I think.
In one recent series, “The Dies The
Fire” series by S.M. Stirling, a strange electrical storm appears over
the planet and suddenly guns aren’t working, and electricity is not
cooperating either. In this series, generally it’s the people with a
clue of what pre-industrial society was all about before the lights went
out that get a chance to shine. Well, everyone except us. Unfortunately,
this author does not have the highest regard for the “Society”, and one
of the main villains in the series is a SCAdian. It is an interesting
read nonetheless. Ah well. We’ll just have to create our own best
selling authors and novels!
Non-SCAdians sometimes think of us as people who have a secret
“survivalist” theme. “Well,” they have been known to say, “if the power
went out, you guys would be happy as clams, right?” {Question- has
anybody ever asked the clams if they are happy? Do we know? Why don’t we
say “Surly as clams, or Bi-Polar as clams? I ask you.}
Anyway, I hate to say this, but if there were one group in modern
society who really don’t want to go back to the Middle Ages permanently
(without being accompanied by the 7th Fleet and a Marine Amphibious
Unit) it would be us! First of all, every SCAdian I have ever met has
been a big fan of luxuries like fresh food, clean water, hot coffee, and
hot showers. We know these are luxuries! Scrape the medieval veneer off
any SCA member, and you’ll meet some of the most advanced techno-geeks
around. Pound for pound, we probably own more tech than any large
corporation. Certainly, another way to say S.C.A is “Society of Computer
Addicts!”
Due to our research, we actually have less illusion about what the life
back then was really like. There’s only so much verisimilitude to
getting a dirty sword shoved into your gut that we want to experience.
I’m pretty certain that at a certain point, every member looks around at
the lack of serious contagious diseases, famines, maimed and deformed
people walking around and thinks: “YAY!I live in the 21st century! I’m
going to get some fast food and check the Internet on my phone! And take
an antibiotic! Just for the heck of it! Woot!” If you’ve been in the
Society for a while, you tend to get a glimmer of what it might have
been like back in the real Middle Ages. “I made it to 40 with a few of
my teeth still in, and most of my fingers, and a chicken! And I was one
of the lucky ones!” The more research we do, the more we can admire just
how incredibly clever, tough, and resilient our Middle Ages ancestors
were.
Maybe, one day some powerful wizard of the ancient days will use a spell
to send a Medieval “Chrono-Naut” forward to one of our Wars. Upon return
to his own time, his report back to the wizard just might sound like
this:
“S’truth, M’lord Merlin. T’is an odd land I visited. In some ways, t’was
very like our own, but in others, very different indeed. They fight as
we do, albeit with brightly colored wooden wasters. M’lord, they had
carts that moved about without aid of horse or any other animal pulling!
Verily, bright lanterns could be held in the hand, yet made no heat! And
when they retired to their pavilions in the eve, there was always a very
odd, loud sound of “VRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNNNNNN””, as if inflating a giant
Bladder!”
You’ll note that when we SCAdians re-create, we happily include modern
medicine and creature comforts in our “alternate timeline”. I suspect
that should any crazed scientist run up to offer any SCA community a
chance to bop back to the 13th century, I’m fairly certain our crowd’s
answer would be a conditional “Maybe.”
Or, better yet, “Yes, we would be happy to visit bygone eras for a short
while, (just to settle some debates) but you better be able to get our
collective tuchasees back into this time promptly at the end of the
visit!” Said scientist might not understand our lack of unbridled
enthusiasm. And he would be amazed at how much stuff we would want to
bring back with us.. just in case. Heck, I go to visit a campsite in the
“near past” for a weekend, and I need a trailer’s worth of stuff!
May all your time travels be comfortable!
THL Thomas “Human Target” Whitehart is also known as “True Thomas the
Storyteller”. His website is
http://www.truethomas.com. |
