Why I joined (and why I almost didn't) as told by Zhara um Nikko I knew that some of my role-play gaming buddies also did this live-action stuff and the more I talked to them about it, the more it seemed preferable to sitting around in a storage room in the back of a gaming shop for hours on end neenering over lame minutia and irrelevant details with a bunch of no life havin', immature, success-allergic, stuck in the mud, un-constructive, lazy, college drop-out waistoid losers wearing 4 day old hooter-hut T-shirts.......... (but let's talk about my ex some other time)... So I asked my buddy Brina to take me by one of these SCA meetings.... And I met the official group in town that made up the barony. I won't go into the ....*ahem*...... WARM reception I received there, except to recount the one thing I remember being told when I was considering an asian or middle eastern persona: "Oh, you can't do that. You have to be from Europe or England. I mean, you could, but no one would talk to you because they wouldn't know anything about that part of the world, so you just shouldn't do it." (this from someone who'd been in the SCA for 5 years and surely knew better.) Work schedules conspired to keep me from going to events for quite some time, but I kept going to baronial meetings trying to get into the swing of things. Mostly, I noticed that the meetings revolved around a bunch of convoluted in-jokes that were several years old, and as a newcomer and an "outsider", nobody was talking to me anyway, middle eastern persona or not. I was bored, I was isolated, and I was losing interest fast. Just when I was ready to give it up, Brina suggested that I try to make it out to an actual event in town. The group within the SCA that she belonged to (she explained that it was called a "household") didn't attend baronial meetings, and I'd only be able to meet these folks at actual events. She assured me that they were much more fun to be with than the folks in the barony, and pointed out that one of our buddies who I knew from role play gaming was in it. In fact, he was *in charge* of this group. "Cool," I said. "I've never been in a game that Cliff was the GM for." Working weekends to put myself through school, I only had a few hours off work to go up to Shelby Forrest and check it out. I arrived late Saturday afternoon in some mundane dress that I thought would pass for middle-ages-ish, and started looking for my buddies. I asked the first few people I met if they knew where I might find Cliff or Sabrina. They pointed to a pavilion on the far side of a big field. "See that crowd of people? Across the field and past that crowd of people, in that tent with the folks playing cards..... that's where you'll find Cliff." So I headed that direction. I headed directly across the feild. It didn't seem logical to walk around the long way, or to push my way through the crowd between me & my destination, but fortunately, there was a big wide channel open between the big crowd and a much smaller crowd on the other side. So I did the logical thing and walked straight though. I figured that the stares I was getting were over my store-bought dress which only vaguely resembled mideaval clothes. Sure enough, Cliff and Sabrina were there, plying cards with several other folks. This was certainly different from the baronial meetings; people were open and freindly and having fun that wasn't at someone else's expense; and they didn't seem to care if my dress was store bought, or if my personna was middle eastern, Indian, or Inuit. Everyone was wearing the now familiar black & white wolves, and I quickly figured out that Sabrina had been hogging all the fun people for herself while I had been mucking it out in the barony. Someone in this group gave me a bead on a string and told me to "take their feast", which turned out to be pretty spiffy. I met more nice folks, ducked flying grapes, learned what "feast gear" was (another nice Legionnaire had loaned me a full set), met a wonderful lady who wanted to help me sew middle eastern clothes **and** teach me how to belly dance, and I was welcome to hang out with her anytime, she'd be glad to show me all the other SCA stuff too, but I'd have to come out to her house so I could stay for lunch, and I'd have to like dogs. No one in the barony had done much more than grunt a "hello" at me, and here were all these people going out of their way to be freindly and helpful. They didn't assume that I knew all the rules and termonology, and didn't seem put out to have to explain it to me. I was almost deciding that this whole SCA thing was pretty neat, after all......... and then there were the stars. By the time feast was over and the group I was with had folded up all the chairs and tables and swept the dining room floor, it was dark outside. I only had a few more minutes to stay before I had to leave to go to my night shift at work. Sabrina & I left the feast hall and started walking back across that big field towards the parking lot. We stopped for just a few minutes to drink a coke and talk. Sitting in her folding chair, I felt the wonderful cool chill of a country night, and looked up. The stars were so incredibly beautiful, unlike anything I'd been able to see under the suburban skies of my youth, and certainly better than under the city skies where I was currently living. I heard crickets chirping, campfires crackling, and distant laughter of groups of people. Someone was playing some wonderful music on a wooden flute. Everything gelled into a moment of sheer perfect beauty. "So, that next event you were talking about going to, is it going to be like this?" I asked. "No," Sabrina said in her usual understated way. "It's a bit bigger. We'll camp overnight. You can tent with me." "Cool." I said. I'd been looking forward to taking a real vacation. Now I could do an SCA event from start to finish, not just a few hour's visit like this time. "What did you say that event was called?" "Pennsic." She said. "You should get an SCA membership. It will help you save money at troll."