This was my first school demo in over three years in the SCA. I was nervous and excited. But they promised me that I wouldn't have to talk, so I figured it couldn't be too bad.

The night before, I tried in vain to find my belt. No joy. Not even Signy's nice tablet woven belt. I found a strip of cloth, that would have to do. I brought my armor in to thaw. I gathered my garb. And I went to bed.

In the morning, dressed and sucked into Usenet, the phone rang. It was Jane, she and Rocky were here to pick me up. I clumped down the stairs (in my period shoes) and tossed my armor and weapons in the back of the truck. They have an extended cab, which made the ride rather comfortable compared to the backs of other trucks I've ridden in…

We arrived in plenty of time, around 45 minutes before the scheduled start time. Rocky went in and, eventually, got the gate unlocked so we could use the close door. We toted in two sets of armor and weapons and some other fancy show-off stuff. Pegge showed up just before we were supposed to start. But apparently, no one had remembered to tell the school we were coming, so the kids didn't get there until 15 minutes later, so we had plenty of time.

They talked, but it was a cafeteria and they were facing away from me, so I really have no clue what was said. It was a bad place for me to understand words at all, actually, but I managed. Then Rocky and I fought. We were introduced as "Gunther, and Virithos, which is really easy to say." Thank you. They told the kids to cheer for us. So they did. It was… kinda distracting, actually. I was fighting, trying to demo fight, when I'm not very experienced at it, and I heard my name… Luckily, Rocky knows how to demo fight and didn't whallop me too badly! It was really discouraging hearing them all chanting "Gunther! Gunther!" but the "Guy who's not Gunther!" was cute. The most disturbing part of it is, with all the kids rooting for me, it made me want to win, to not let them down. I didn't actually flub any shots, but it was tempting. Very disturbing. I'm very glad that tourneys don't usually have cheering. I confess, it was nice to hear "Boo!" when I died!

We fought sword and shield, and I won one and Rocky won one. Then he switched to two-stick, and I went with polearm. I have a phobia of two-stick, I'm damn well going to face it with my best weapon! He killed me, I killed him. Then we went pole on pole. We were both sucking air to start with, and trying to make it more interesting and longer, I didn't fight as efficiently as I usually do. I was exhausted. Rocky was exhausted. I was sure we were both gong to fall to the ground without being hit. But I tried one more attack, and damnit it landed light! And he looked at me. And fell down. Whew! Done for now! Later, we did another sword and shield, and he legged me, then blatantly left his head open (it took me a while to take it, because I suspected a trap). The body twitched, so I put it out of its misery. The crowd went wild.

For one bout, he put on the pig face, and we played "I'm over here, Gunther!" Then we went over why we don't take all shots, losing limbs, and how that wouldn't have happened in period. They unarmored Rocky and sent his armor around the room. Then they shot marshmallows from a cute little catapult. Then it was lunch time and we went home.

Very interesting. I'll definitely do it again if ever the chance comes up.