The SCA and Alex
I have been mulling this over for a week now and really just needed to dump my thought someplace and maybe get some input:
I am slowly but surely starting to fight again. This is good.
Biff is fighting and doing very, very well. She is getting a great deal of attention from the good gentles in the area and it is well deserved. She won her first tournament and is now the Defender of the Baroness' Heart.
James is also fighting and he is also doing well. He does not have the raw talent for it that Biff does but he has a strong work ethic and is very analytical while Biff relies on her skills and aggression to win the day.
Madrun....well, she is just freaking amazing in an all around the block kind of way for which I am at a loss for words.
So, in the midst of all of this, where does it leave Alex? He wants so very badly to garner the respect and acclaim that the rest of the family is getting but he doesn't know how to go about it.
I am sure I will catch crap for typing this but Alex is lazy. Plain and simple....this is not a bad thing necessarily...I am lazy and it has worked out pretty well for me.
He was doing Youth Combat for a little while and he was showing potential...about the time Biff started. He could not hack it. The heat and work were too much for him and so, after a few melodramatic moments, we pulled the plug. Potential is one thing but without the work, it amounts to frustration for everyone around.
Now he says that he wants to get into archery. OK, fine, I say...but when I talk to him about it and told him that it took a LOT of work to be a good archer (for someone who does not have Alex's motor skill issues....which I did not say to him but its true nonetheless), he got sort of down. Almost as if the basis of his interest was that it seemed easy.
He also spoke with a fencer. He was excited about that prospect. He was under the impression that the armor was nothing and thus he would not get sweaty...when I explained the armor to him, he was, once again downcast because this was also not going to be something light and fluffy that he could do.
Now we are back to Heavy Fighting. His endurance has improved a great deal.....a great deal and now its cooling off quite a bit. He wants to start back fighting Youth again which is fine by me.....archery and fencing are fine by me as well and he is aware of that. Arts and Sciences are fine by me if that's what he wants to do....and he knows that.
So, we are starting the process of armoring Alex....again...and we will see where it goes this time. I want for him to be good at something and enjoy being good at it, I just don't know how do get through to him that being good at anything means working at it....he says, "but Biff is a good fighter and she has been since the day she started" and I tell him, "yes, but unless she works at it, she will never be better than she was the day she started".....but I just don't know if he actually gets it.
I am slowly but surely starting to fight again. This is good.
Biff is fighting and doing very, very well. She is getting a great deal of attention from the good gentles in the area and it is well deserved. She won her first tournament and is now the Defender of the Baroness' Heart.
James is also fighting and he is also doing well. He does not have the raw talent for it that Biff does but he has a strong work ethic and is very analytical while Biff relies on her skills and aggression to win the day.
Madrun....well, she is just freaking amazing in an all around the block kind of way for which I am at a loss for words.
So, in the midst of all of this, where does it leave Alex? He wants so very badly to garner the respect and acclaim that the rest of the family is getting but he doesn't know how to go about it.
I am sure I will catch crap for typing this but Alex is lazy. Plain and simple....this is not a bad thing necessarily...I am lazy and it has worked out pretty well for me.
He was doing Youth Combat for a little while and he was showing potential...about the time Biff started. He could not hack it. The heat and work were too much for him and so, after a few melodramatic moments, we pulled the plug. Potential is one thing but without the work, it amounts to frustration for everyone around.
Now he says that he wants to get into archery. OK, fine, I say...but when I talk to him about it and told him that it took a LOT of work to be a good archer (for someone who does not have Alex's motor skill issues....which I did not say to him but its true nonetheless), he got sort of down. Almost as if the basis of his interest was that it seemed easy.
He also spoke with a fencer. He was excited about that prospect. He was under the impression that the armor was nothing and thus he would not get sweaty...when I explained the armor to him, he was, once again downcast because this was also not going to be something light and fluffy that he could do.
Now we are back to Heavy Fighting. His endurance has improved a great deal.....a great deal and now its cooling off quite a bit. He wants to start back fighting Youth again which is fine by me.....archery and fencing are fine by me as well and he is aware of that. Arts and Sciences are fine by me if that's what he wants to do....and he knows that.
So, we are starting the process of armoring Alex....again...and we will see where it goes this time. I want for him to be good at something and enjoy being good at it, I just don't know how do get through to him that being good at anything means working at it....he says, "but Biff is a good fighter and she has been since the day she started" and I tell him, "yes, but unless she works at it, she will never be better than she was the day she started".....but I just don't know if he actually gets it.