If one plans to become a middle-aged female teacher of high school English, there is no better preparation than the study of the sword. Seriously.
Yesterday, as I was packing up my materials to leave school for the weekend--an enterprise which, since my back problems flared up, has required a lot of student assistance--one of the small tribe of students who had been staying after in my room, playing online games and discussing zombies with one another, asked me a question.
"Ms. Bishop," Randy asked. "Is it true you hurt your back sword-fighting?" He looked at Josh and Jake, his friends and (presumably) the source of this rumor which Randy hardly dared to credit.
"Yep," I was able to answer. "Yep, it's true."
Although this recent flare-up (worse than the original injury, by far) seems to have been due to nothing more exotic than the H1N1 flu, it is true that I got my original injury sparring, kendo-style, with boff swords: foam-rubber padded swords often used in LARP games, because they allow for realistic athleticism, without realistic injuries.
I have never been in any LARP societies, nor have I ever, like the friends who taught me to wield a sword, ever been active in the Society for Creative Anachronism. Indeed, the only SCA event I ever attended struck me as monumentally boring--other than the clothes, which were, I'll admit, drop-dead gorgeous. But I was fascinated with the grace and (I might as well admit it) romanticism of learning how to use a sword, and in my thirties, back in the days when I had time for such things, I loved sparring with a boffer. I was never very good, but I did get to the point where I was good enough to injure myself: a little too much energy and enthusiasm in an explosive, twisting action, combined with a little to little grace and flexibility, and the result has been that I'll never fence again--or take up golf, I suppose.
But I did hurt myself originally while swinging a sword, and I do know people who have earned a living making suits of armor (plate armor, in fragile-but-comfortable aluminum, available enameled in your choice of fashion colors).
And I think zombies, orcs, and medieval weaponry are all kind of neat.
In a wholly fictional sort of way, mind you.
I admitted all this.
"Cool!" said Randy.
And then he, Josh, Jake, and I proceeded to discuss medieval armor and weaponry--the original arms race--all the way out to my car.
I stopped halfway across the parking lot, midway through an earnest discussion of the effects of a crossbow bolt on a suit of plate armor.
"You know, this is an odd sort of a conversation for a Quaker English teacher to have with her students on a Friday afternoon," I remarked.
We all grinned.
And, you know, it's really much, much easier to teach students who think you're the last word in cool than students who think otherwise.
I owe a lot to my dueling scars.
Yesterday, as I was packing up my materials to leave school for the weekend--an enterprise which, since my back problems flared up, has required a lot of student assistance--one of the small tribe of students who had been staying after in my room, playing online games and discussing zombies with one another, asked me a question.
"Ms. Bishop," Randy asked. "Is it true you hurt your back sword-fighting?" He looked at Josh and Jake, his friends and (presumably) the source of this rumor which Randy hardly dared to credit.
"Yep," I was able to answer. "Yep, it's true."
Although this recent flare-up (worse than the original injury, by far) seems to have been due to nothing more exotic than the H1N1 flu, it is true that I got my original injury sparring, kendo-style, with boff swords: foam-rubber padded swords often used in LARP games, because they allow for realistic athleticism, without realistic injuries.
I have never been in any LARP societies, nor have I ever, like the friends who taught me to wield a sword, ever been active in the Society for Creative Anachronism. Indeed, the only SCA event I ever attended struck me as monumentally boring--other than the clothes, which were, I'll admit, drop-dead gorgeous. But I was fascinated with the grace and (I might as well admit it) romanticism of learning how to use a sword, and in my thirties, back in the days when I had time for such things, I loved sparring with a boffer. I was never very good, but I did get to the point where I was good enough to injure myself: a little too much energy and enthusiasm in an explosive, twisting action, combined with a little to little grace and flexibility, and the result has been that I'll never fence again--or take up golf, I suppose.
But I did hurt myself originally while swinging a sword, and I do know people who have earned a living making suits of armor (plate armor, in fragile-but-comfortable aluminum, available enameled in your choice of fashion colors).
And I think zombies, orcs, and medieval weaponry are all kind of neat.
In a wholly fictional sort of way, mind you.
I admitted all this.
"Cool!" said Randy.
And then he, Josh, Jake, and I proceeded to discuss medieval armor and weaponry--the original arms race--all the way out to my car.
I stopped halfway across the parking lot, midway through an earnest discussion of the effects of a crossbow bolt on a suit of plate armor.
"You know, this is an odd sort of a conversation for a Quaker English teacher to have with her students on a Friday afternoon," I remarked.
We all grinned.
And, you know, it's really much, much easier to teach students who think you're the last word in cool than students who think otherwise.
I owe a lot to my dueling scars.
Comments
Hystery, the problem I see with pretend violence as the SCA has it is that it makes war into something wholly positive--no one ever dies, and the society leaves sites in better shape than they found them! No laying waste here! I think the SCA can be great for character-building and more, but I don't see people acknowledging the moral ambiguities of the real past.
Of course, they share that flaw with numerous and often respectable company here in the US.
I was uncomfortable with the way some regiments actually had hierarchies and officers and stuff, but the one I was in didn't.
I stopped doing re-enactment when I discovered Paganism though - mainly because Paganism was what I was really looking for at the time.
Anjea
As far as I know, play-fighting and particularly the impulse to whack things with sticks are natural to human children (perhaps especially boys). That doesn't mean it should be given free rein, of course, but is it a good idea to entirely repudiate it?
In pagan terms, I'd relate this question to the idea of the Shadow — the anti-self made from the parts of ourselves we don't dare to own. I've read many accounts of how banishing sexuality to the shadow realm can backfire (and has, in our society, at a large scale), and wonder if banishing all "violence" (construed broadly so as to include play-violence) is likely to work any better.
Knowing what antlers are for, I'd imagine the Horned One as a patron of play-violence — and of the clear distinction between it and the real violence of the hunt. So I'm also very interested in hearing more of Cat's perspective on the intersection of paganism, Quakerism, and playing with swords...