Renaissance Festival War Stories September 14-15, 2024

...Continued from Weekend 4

This marks weekend 5 of the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. This is where the show gets notoriously challenging: we start running out of energy quicker, I'm missing my husband more, and the weather is fickle. Time to dig deep and find the reserves, because we have a show to do.

The Long Goodbye

This weekend marks the final weekend we have with our team member Query the Riddlemaster. We got five weekends with him and we wish we could have had seven. He is an absolute treasure and we look forward to visiting him in his village of Fairhaven.

Loud Lawn Ornament

Saturday marked the first day I was finally able to go outside the gate in the morning and greet patrons. There was a misty-rain, but that did not stop the solid crowds for over an hour. I yelled directions to anyone who might hear me to help control lines. One woman came up to me, called me by name, and referenced this very blog and how it helped prepare them for the day. It was her children's first visit to the festival. The family was all in garb and ready to attack the day. It filled my heart to know they came in prepared.

After the crowds died down a little, I found a spot among them to be a divider in the lines and still be entertaining. I pulled out my book and started reading "bathtime thoughts." I know I am doing something right when people 20 feet and two lines away are listening and laughing at my one-liners.

Merry Cringe-mas.

This season, I am 38 years old. I am truly middle-aged, and that's okay. There is something that happens with getting older, but still having a lot of access to the things children's interests and media. One of those things that I have heard a lot of: Gen Z slang. There is a special kind of magic that happens when you are old enough to be an 12-year-old's parent, say their slang, while in full renaissance festival gear.

I had a family sitting with us for riddles and one tween dressed as a dragon was not super enthused about sitting there, but still was respectful and listening. After several riddles I said something that resembled slang. I think I referenced 'mid'-level riddles, meaning medium level challenging, not mediocre. This is when the tween makes a reaction. I then drop a string of (intentionally wrong) slang along the line of, "Am I sigma-skibidi-rizz-Ohio-toilet-gyat? Am I a rizzly-bear? A rizzley-deer?"

The tween drops their head back with a "No!" I can feel their cringe level.

Guess what? When the 38 year old whyte lady in full garb at the renaissance festival in Minnesota is quoting your slang to you - it's time for new slang.

But that cringe is the most satisfying thing; like warm soup, or milk and cookies in my belly.

Living Knightmare

After closing up the stop for the evening Saturday, Sir Factant and myself headed to the Last Call show for the feature we are part of. Near the Mead Pub, while we were waiting for our segment, is the Romance Garden. Sitting on a rock outside the Romance Garden was a knight who was doing his best statue impression. From a distance, he's quite statuesque, and for those of us who know, know this is a patron, not cast, and definitely not a statue. I look to Sir Factant and say, "Let's see if we can break him."

We approach and start dropping one liners on him. He turns his head almost robotically to look at us and does not make a sound. We keep going with our one liners and while he doesn't say anything with words, he says everything with his body language. His head falls forward and back, he eventually falls to the ground with his hands and feet up like a turtle. My favorite one was when I said, "A girlfriend implies the existance of a girl-foe." He looked at me and pointed to me. It took Sir Factant saying, "He means you, you're the girl-foe," to realize why he was pointing at me.

The Harder We Fall

At the top of this post, I mentioned how this is the weekend where things get challenging. Saturday, was hard: lower energy, less sleep, and I didn't have all my meds, so recovering was difficult. Sunday, was the same, but now it's two days on rough sleep and without all the right meds. I had energy, drank an energy drink and was good for about the first hour of the day, but the heat was getting to me. I tried going to a cold space, but it didn't help enough. I could not shake the discomfort. When I realized my legs were tingling, I knew I was in trouble.

By 2:30PM It was time for me to throw in the towel. I had to call it a day for my own health and safety. I had never done it before. As the head of my team, I wasn't proud of myself, but I was damn proud of my team who picked up my slack and damn proud and grateful for the cast who help me get safely back to my tent and home. As soon as I did get home, I fell asleep for an hour and a half.

Know your limits. Know that you do not let people down by stopping. Sometimes the best way to play the game, is to end the current one so you can win the next. And a win is coming.

Something is coming...

See you in Weekend 6...