My Family Has No Clue

Does getting away with it for nearly 40 years cut it?...I told my mum I was going with a friend to her Dads soccer match..but we actually went ice skating..and I fell and broke my wrist. Told the folks I fell down the concrete steps at the game...and in one brief moment 40 yrs later I said without thinking...about falling on the ice.

Newsflash..Mother's still get angry at you even all those years later for fibbing ...

I lived with my grandparents for most of my life (my dad got custody in the divorce), and my grandmother became very worried when I started being friends with a guy from high school, started going to science fiction conventions in other cities, and then joined the Society for Creative Anachronism. She thought I was still too young to go off out of town without the family (I was 19). I told her it would be okay, because that nice lady librarian she watched on the local noon hour TV show was my friend, she'd be there, and was a responsible person who I felt I could ask for help if I needed it (that person fell over laughing when I told her - "Me, responsible? HAHAHHAHAHA!"). But I said I had to tell my grandmother something reassuring or she'd continue fretting.

Anyway... what I never told my grandmother was that my sleeping arrangements for my first SCA tournament - held over a weekend at a local campground - were co-ed, with my boyfriend. To my grandmother's dying day she was convinced I shared the librarian's tent (would have been impossible as she had a tiny pup tent that always mystified me... where had she changed into her medieval costumes?). And years later when a big group of us from my city and another would share hotel rooms at the conventions, some of the roommates were guys. I always told my grandmother they were 'friends' but didn't specify names. One was actually another woman's husband, but I wasn't sure my grandmother would care about that distinction.

Sound paranoid? I was an adult, right? Well, this was all to keep the peace in the household. My grandmother was furious when I came home at 6:30 am after an all-night board-gaming session with some of the SCA group. There were 3 guys and me, sitting around a card table, playing a strategy game. It ended at 6 am, and I tried sneaking in very quietly... and was caught. My grandmother had checked earlier, my dad tried to cover for me, telling her it was only about 3 am, but she didn't believe him.

My dad, btw, trusted me to make my own decisions, and said that if I ever needed a ride home, I could call him. He trusted me to pick safe friends and not make stupid decisions. He also believed me that when I said to them that I'd spent the last 10 hours playing board games around a card table, that's what I'd been doing.

My grandmother wailed, "What about your REPUTATION!" She would also wail, "What will the NEIGHBORS think?"

I told her that the "neighbors" weren't the same people who lived there when I was a kid, and these neighbors didn't know me and didn't care what I did, where I went, who my friends were... and if they had any objections on the occasions when my friends came to pick me up for our medieval activities (SCA meetings and events were always done in costume) and they happened to be wearing tunics and hose, they could take those objections and stuff them.

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One day one of my grandfather's cousins came to visit on a day when we had a feast and tournament going on and she arrived before I left. She was shocked when I came downstairs in a long, red dress, beaded shoes, headband, hair done in an "unmarried-10th-century-woman" style, I was also wearing a cloak, shawl, and belt pouches and other jewelry, and carrying a bag of medieval-style dishes and candles. I told her this was standard for a medieval feast and I had to leave now because I was one of the organizers.

Then my boyfriend and another friend showed up to come get me (we were going to a local church hall). The cousin flipped out, my grandmother's friend from across the street was also visiting; she thought it was a bit strange, and my grandmother was ready to sink through the floor in embarrassment. She thought it completely inappropriate that I'd be picked up by men with long(ish) hair, both bearded, and both wearing 15th-century merchant costumes that consisted of a mid-length tunic, hose, a cloak, and shoes.

"THOSE MEN ARE WEARING DRESSES!" my cousin said, horrified, as these three elderly women all peered out of the kitchen window at the same time. Then she decided I'd joined a cult. No amount of explaining that the Society for Creative Anachronism was a nonprofit educational organization that had re-creation of the daily life in the Middle Ages as one of its long-term goals would change her mind. I said that I was being taken to the church hall to help get things ready for the feast that night, and the guys were going to participate in an archery tournament that afternoon, before the feast. We were expected to wear costumes, and I told her that at least half the men there would also be wearing similar clothing.

My grandmother's friend from across the street smiled and said it sounded interesting and she wished she was 20 years younger so she'd have the energy to go.

I can only imagine that after we left, my grandmother must have mentioned the nice lady librarian from local TV who also went to these things and would help keep me out of trouble.

The truth is that while my grandmother eventually got used to my costumed activities and thought it was funny when the neighbors did a double-take if they saw me in costume, she was still embarrassed when I told her about going around town in costume (we did demos here and there, at the Farmer's Market, various parks, one of the arts centres, and a couple of local theatres). And she really did not like me being picked up by men she kept insisting were wearing dresses. I tried explaining that men really did used to dress like that over 500 years ago, but some people just can't take the long view.