I've heard through the grapevine now and then that, apparently, I'm scary.
I've learned to remember this on an intellectual level, but my emotional self still doesn't take this into account. That is, I have to think about that fact in my interactions with people–my emotional self doesn't deal with interpreting my relationships with strangers anywhere along the lines of "that person may be acting that way toward me because they're scared of me."
In part, I suppose it is because I don't ever ever recall, twenty years ago, being scared of any of the knights. I respected them, yes, but I still recall Baroness Caitilin advising me "I wouldn't call him 'Diccon'." when I asked her for advice on how to approach Duke Richard for instruction. 'Cause I was already going to call him by that familiar name–everyone else was!
Five people have approached me to be squires over the years. Only Colin and I actually came to agreement. Yes, there are people I"ve asked who didn't work out too. About the same numbers, actually. Perhaps tellingly, those who asked me mostly did it in the first few years of my knighthood. In the last 7 years, only one guy. Who promptly was swallowed back into his regular life.
Everyone I've taken besides Colin has been asked by me: Susannah, Edwin, Evja, Philip. When I asked him, Philip's second or third reaction was "Gee, I didn't think you liked me very much."
So there's some sort of PR problem out there, which I'm in part trying to deal with here.
I think the folks I regularly practice with know I'm not scary, but by and large those guys are all younger than I would consider taking as a squire. Like Anton, I want people who are grown ups, who know what they want in the SCA, whose lives won't be turned inside-out the week after they graduate. As highly as I regard the great bunch of 18-20 year olds at Thursday practice, I've seen twenty-five 18-20 year olds jump enthusiastically into the SCA, build armor, fight for a while...and disappear.
So while I could probably have 4 new squires out of the UVa practice, that's not right for me. I'll talk about that with them after graduation.
Over the 12+ years I've been a knight, I've seen many people I thought were a good match for our household go to other knights. By and large, that's fine. A few have become less than they could have been, but that doesn't necessarily reflect on their choice of households. Other things besides who's training you affect your SCA career.
Sometimes a fighter has gotten messed up in fealty problems. These guys are bound to be sensitive. They may have had a messy end to their fealty and be belt shy. Well, all I can say there is that no one I've ever taken in to the house has had that sort of problem with me. To these guys, all I can do is say "Sorry things are as they are. Let me know if I can help in any way."
These days when I look around at practices and events, I don't see a bunch of people obviously ready to enter a formal fealty relationship in order to progress in their fighting. In fact, scouring my mind and actually doing research, I've only thought of two, maybe three, all a long way into North Carolina, one of them a woman. And she's probably not squired yet only because I think I take women's potential more seriously than most of my brothers do.
All of this is, I suppose, a very long way of paraphrasing the masonic bumper sticker "2B1 ask 1". If you think you're a good match for my style of managing a house, a practice, a training path, then talk to me. 2b1 ask >|<. I don't bite. I'm not scary.
Update: an old article of mine on squiring at this link.
Technorati Tags: Heavy Fighting, SCA