Friday I spent the day at the Kenosha days of discovery as part of a group promoting the Bristol Renaissance Faire. This turned out to be an incredible experience.
I arrived five minutes before my 2 hour shift thanks to traffic. Once I hurriedly changed I got out on the ‘street’ only to discover that the people we completely enamored to have characters wandering. I was dressed as my pirate character as it seemed appropriate for the tall ships. It was a hit. It took me 1:45 approximately to move the distance from one ship to another. From the moment I hit the ship area I was constantly approached by kids and adults all wanting to get pictures with or talk to a real pirate. I don’t think that I have ever been photographed so much in my life.
About half an hour in I met up with Al Murin and he and I hung out the whole rest of the day playing with people. There were countless interactions but a few stood out.
I was approached by a blind boy led by his sister at one point. At first I didn’t even notice he was blind, I just assumed he was nervous. He was very excited to talk to me, I tried describing a few of the ships and I hope it worked in the end I gave him a ‘magical stone’ aka dragons tear. (Well I let him reach inside the chest so he could feel it, and then i put one in his hand. I then told him how the magic worked. “you take this magic stone, keep it safe… And then when you aren’t feeling well or are sad some day you take it out and you hold it in your hand and run your fingers over it. When you do that you will start to remember all the fun you had here today. You’ll remember the ships. You’ll remember me, and all the other people you met today. I promise. Can you do that for me?” he smiled and said, “yes Mr. pirate.” and with that he let his sister lead
him away.
Many of the interactions included versions of the magic stone story… usually resulting in some glow of belief even from the more skeptical of children.
More to come later…
John's Musings 