Puritanical Indentured Servitude

Props to Mignon for supplying the idea for the title.

Surprisingly, my so-called indentured servitude was not as bad as I'd imagined it would be. It was a few degrees under sweltering with humidity about 10% under sauna level, but at least we weren't hit by the severe thunderstorms forecasted.

The "paintball" group turned out to be a spin-off from D&D. We were greeted by a "witch" in some none-too-appealing garb, who politely informed us they'd be running around the property wailing on eachother with foam swords, but to just ignore them because we didn't exist in their world...unless we were monsters trying to attack them (which I rather fancied the idea of).

Ms. Witchy was actually an alum of my University, which seemed a slight embarrassment to Ms. Ditz. She threw a few satchels of birdseed at us ("spells") and was ready to depart when a Knight in Shining Armor strode up. We heard the clanking from a ways away and one of the girls commented, "Wow, he looks hot." She'll never live that down, even though the man was likely more than twice her 18-years-of-age and she meant "sweaty in all that armor" not "wow his sword is long."

Sir Knight allowed us to wail on him for a bit with his foam sword, saying it was good practice for his upcoming "duel to the death" against two ogres. Nothing personal, but my money would be on Shrek & Fiona. Especially if Donkey was there.

The majority of my group (apart from the 2 instructors) are 18-year-old freshmen who were a little harsh with comments about how they "wouldn't be caught dead running around with a foam sword fighting Ogres in their forties." I was a little pissed that the instructors didn't back me up in my comments of, "everyone has little quirks and odd hobbies - it's not like they wear that garb to work. They've been very nice to us and not been disrespectful to us in any way (with an unvoiced 'we should return the favor')" Matter of fact, Ms. Ditz was among the girls making comments about "crazies" and "weirdos."

Everyone has their own thing they do for fun. I wasn't about to make snide comments about a group of people who had been perfectly nice to us, even let us wail on them with swords. Although I will say this, I had an unresistable urge to quote Monty Python. In particular, "We are the Knights who say NI!"



So psyched about my trip up to Pittsburgh to see Spamalot, but that's a story for another night.