How To Make Friends

            I’ve often heard people say that they have no idea how to make friends. So, I’ve decided to write a brief guide based on my observations of the new friend Colleen and I made this past weekend at the Royal Medieval Faire.

            This guide really only consists of one step: be mysterious. Not in an aloof, dark, mysterious stranger way, but passive way. It’s easier than it sounds. A lot of people are quite happy and eager to talk about themselves and their lives; all you need to do is constrain yourself to only giving occasional pieces of information about yourself. Preferably the most interesting points in your life – and without context, if possible.

            The best way for me to explain is with the story of our new friend. When he first appeared under our tent (where we were selling chainmaille, of course) at the faire, Colleen complimented him on the awesome coat he was wearing. He stuck around for a little, chatting and joining in a conversation we were having with friends from Colleen’s homeschooling group. At some point the style of homeschooling (called un-schooling, which focuses on teaching kids what they’re interested in) was mentioned, and it turned out that he’d also been raised that way.

            I also noticed, while he was there, that he had a piece of string around a finger that led down to what I believed to be the hilt of a dagger hidden in his sleeve. Very interesting, I thought, but at that point I didn’t know him well enough to comment upon it. Eventually he left, going to enjoy the rest of the faire.

            About an hour from the end of the event, he came back to chat with us some more (he no longer hat he dagger in his sleeve). The three of us talked about all kinds of topics, discovering we had lots of common ground. Every now and then he’d mention something about his own life, but he didn’t go on about it. They were just interesting points that made me more curious about him.

            The first thing he mentioned was that he’d only been in Canada for two weeks. Because he had an unfamiliar accent, I took that to mean he had just immigrated, but he clarified that he was native to Canada, but had been travelling in Europe for the past nine months. His accent, as it turned out, was technically a speech impediment as it was unique to him, a couple of his siblings (out of seven) and some guy from a fishing village who deliberately changed the way he spoke so he wouldn’t be associated with others from his village.

            At some point he mentioned how, while in Europe he’d climbed a castle while wearing an Assassins’ Creed hoodie. Later he confirmed that, yes, he can actually do parkour (which is awesome). At another time, when I asked about what kind of work he does, he didn’t directly answer, but did say he was going back to the old job from before he was travelling – then told us about how he’d had to get security clearance first and his option (which he didn’t take) to request “Top Secret” security clearance.

            He ended up staying after the show and chatted while we packed up. He helped where he could (we have a system and it’s hard to fit someone else in), most notably holding a couple bags for about 30 minutes to keep them off the wet ground. That in itself doesn’t sound all that remarkable, but these bags each weighed 30-40lbs and he had them hanging from his forearms, elbows bent, and he didn’t even show any strain from the weight.

            It was at this point that I said to Colleen, loudly enough for him to hear, that he’d had a dagger concealed in his sleeve (he was very surprised that I’d noticed it), he’d just spent close to a year in Europe, he could do parkour, he was impressively strong and he needed security clearance for the job the conveniently hadn’t mentioned what it was. Clearly he was a spy.

            From there, we all had a great time, putting together the snippets he’d told us about to prove he was a spy. He denied being one, of course, although he would neither confirm nor deny being an assassin. He even went so far to point out that the name he gave us might not actually be his real name.

            We had a blast, but I still don’t know what it is he actually does. I’m very curious, and therefore I have no choice but to be his friend so I can find out.

            And there you have it. The best way to make friends is to be mysterious. Make people curious about you so they’ll have to spend time around you to find out more.

            Also, be a spy and wear an epic coat to serve as an icebreaker.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Experiences

            Looking back over my blog posts, I’m astounded at how rarely I mention my LARPing days. This should probably change, as it was what my whole life revolved around for close to four years.

            Firstly, for the uninitiated, what is LARPing? It’s short for Live Action Role Playing. The quickest way if describing it is that once a week I’d dress up in a costume and go out to a park with a group of friends. We would then proceed to have fights using pool noodle swords and yell the magic spells that our fantasy-based game (Amtgard) had. It’s a bit more complicated than that, with playing the roles of characters and solving puzzles in quests, but that’s the general gist of it.

            It sounds strange, I know. When our local group was first founded and my best friend and I were invited to join, we almost didn’t go. But we figured that it was worth trying out – and it sure sounded safer than the fighting with wooden swords we’d been doing – so we went and we were hooked. We both became part of the core of the group and were soon heavily involved in running the group.

            If I had gone with my initial “that’s weird” instinct and never joined, I would have missed out on some amazing experiences. Two, in particular, come to mind. I think of them as being “movie experiences” because... well, they felt like I was in the middle of a movie. They felt like they shouldn’t be possible, yet they were happening.

            The first happened at an event called Battle of the Dens, hosted by the largest Amtgard group in Canada. Hosted on a large, forested private property, this event allowed us to have night-time battles. As I am a sneaky type, and played as an assassin, this suited me quite well. One night, a group of us ran a mini-game were one team played the a caravan and the other – a team of assassins – set up ambushes. It was wonderful, but one moment stands out the most. The team of six assassins were stalking our prey, creeping through a field of long grass under the starry sky. I stuck my head above the level of grass to get my bearings, and saw nothing but a field of grass stretched out before me. Then another head popped up. And another. Just like raptors in Jurassic Park. One by one, we vanished back down into the grass. It was amazing.

            Still, as great as that was, it doesn’t compare in outright feeling to a three-way battle we had one day. This was during a summer when our group had its largest number of members. There were three teams of about ten people each, competing with each other. Being clever and strategic, my team was letting the other two weaken each other until they caught on to what we were doing. Then they teamed up against us. Our small team was down a hill from the other two, and I was at the head. The enemy army, twice the size of ours, came pouring down the hill. I stepped out into the fray, swinging to the left and right, cutting down my enemies as they streamed past me to engage with the rest of my army. It was a glorious moment, straight out of a movie, and before I had done it myself I never believed it was possible to survive an onslaught like that. But, I did, and we won – and though it was “only” part of a game, to this day it remains one of the greatest moments of my life.

            Yet, every now and then, I wonder, what would have happened if I’d decided not to try out this game that I first thought was crazy – as do most people I tell about it. How many experiences would I have missed out on, just because I thought it might be embarrassing to dress up and go sword-fighting in public? Or because I was shy and uncertain about joining a group of mostly strangers? Some things we just have to try to find out what they’re really like. Otherwise we can miss out on the most important experiences of our lives.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Strange Gatherings

            One of the most fascinating things to me is how quickly complete strangers can bond over common interests. This could partially be because I, as an extremely introverted person, tend to prefer staying home and avoiding as much social interaction as possible. The idea is somewhat alien to me that people actually seek out social situations. That said, I do occasionally emerge from under my rock to mingle with the living.

            Last Thursday was one such occasion. The vast excitement over Pokemon Go had bred whole new social circles. There are now Facebook groups focused on helping each of the three in-game teams co-ordinate their catching and gym battling efforts within their city, as well as sharing their latest victories.

            On my team’s local group (team Mystic), the idea came up to throw a PokeParty at one of the local parks – just to get together, meet each other, have a barbeque and maybe battle the nearby gym. Within a few weeks, the pavilion was rented and the event was organized. They even decided to open the even to the rival teams.

            So, Colleen and I thought, why not? We went down to the park with my sister-in-law to see what it would be like, catch some pokemon, and maybe meet some people if it couldn’t be avoided.

            Now, this was an all-day event, which was nice for making it available for people with many different schedules. The flip side was that the result was that, rather than a whole lot of people, there was a small amount of people there with the members changing throughout the day. As an introvert, I greatly approved of this.

            For most of the two hours we were there, there were seven of us there. We flipped between hanging out as a group while eating hamburgers and wandering between the nearby pokestop and gym. All of us got along astoundingly well – not surprising, since we were all team Mystic.

            Then the gym was claimed by some team Valor players. Through struggling back and forth for control of the gym and watching the nearby people, we were able to identify the three rivals who were, like us, wandering between the pokestop and gym. So, after we claimed the gym a filled it full of magikarp (Pokemon players will understand how hilarious this is), one of the party’s organizers approached the Valor players and invited them to join us for some hamburgers.

            So, the party grew – and, despite the playful trash talk (now mostly aimed at the not-present team Instinct players), we all got along wonderfully. While I wasn’t there for the rest of the event, I think it can be considered quite a success.

            It’s even more interesting, though, when you look at our current society. We’re told from childhood to beware of strangers. We avoid all contact with people we don’t know. It’s like we have this fear that anyone we don’t know is a horrible person, or someone we wouldn’t get along with.

            Yet, all it took was a single point of interest to bring together a group of people who would never have spoken to each other. Not only that, but that point of interest (and food) was enough to ignore that we were on rival teams and competing for control of a gym. There was reason (at least for extremely competitive people) to be antagonistic, but we were all friendly.

            It seems to me that all it takes for people to get along is one thing in common. I wonder how much better a place the world would be if people, when looking at others, looked at the similarities rather than the differences (and maybe shared some food).

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

A Most Interesting Game

            So, a few years back I was in a restaurant with part of my wife’s extended family. At this point in time we hadn’t been dating very long, so I didn’t really know who anyone was. Across from me sat my wife’s uncle, a man with a bushy, black, grey-streaked beard and a brightly coloured beanie (yellow and red, if I remember correctly).

            Partway through the evening, after losing interest in the conversation of the rest of the table, this man (who I hadn’t spoken to at all, since I’m kinda the shy quiet type) gathered together two salt and two pepper shakers and put them in the center of the table. He then gave me this serious, considering look, and very deliberately moved one of the salt shakers on an angle to rest beside a pepper shaker.

            Not entirely certain what was going on, or what the intended rules for this game were, I decided to play along. After a moment of consideration, I moved a pepper shaker to make the pattern of all the shakers relatively symmetrical.

            My wife’s uncle made an impressed face, nodding, as if this was a very cunning move. Then he moved a salt shaker, and I followed up with a pepper shaker. This went on and on, for probably half an hour or more. We never said a word to each other. We just kept moving shakers, playing by whatever rules were implied by the other player’s actions and aiming for imaginary goals that we weren’t entirely certain of.

            The game came to an end when someone else at the table finally asked us what we were doing. Playing a game, we replied. What were the rules? Oh, we’re just making them up as we go along.

            The magic of the silent game was broken, there seemed no point in going on with it or restarting now that it had been defined. But to this day, this was the most unique – and I’d even say profound – way I’ve ever been introduced to someone. Strange as the experience was, it was incredible – and the memory of it will stay with me forever.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

The Journey of the Outsider

            Something I’ve noticed is that a lot of stories – especially in fantasy – are about outsiders. The main characters tend to come from places where they’ve been cloistered off from the rest of the world, if not from an entirely different world all together.

            I’ve realized that at least part of the reason the reason these outsiders make such good main characters is because of how much it helps the author display the world. It limits the character’s knowledge and, as a result, allows the reader to learn about the world as the character does. That farmer living in a secluded village has a lot more to learn than a well educated scholar who is already immersed in the world.

            As readers, we are more forgiving to be told about a world if we’re learning along with the character. We don’t like the story being interrupted so we can be lectured about the world. If it’s the character who is learning, it’s then part of the story. We’re also more willing to accept mistakes the character may make out of ignorance, because we know everything that they know. It doesn’t matter if it’s common knowledge in the world – we didn’t learn it, so it is acceptable that the character also lacks this knowledge.

            Imagine how different the story would have been if Harry Potter had been raised within the wizarding world instead of with muggles. Or if Ron or any other wizard born character had the lead role. All the things that had our imaginations staring around in wonder and delight would have been every hay hum-drum to the main character. Instead of rubbernecking his way along Diagon Alley, pointing out all the wondrous shops, it would have been like a stroll in the shopping mall. We would have been lucky to have our attention drawn to the Nimbus 2000. All the magic would have been sapped out of the world because it was so normal to the character.

            Would Narnia had been so fantastic to someone who grew up there? Would a journey across Middle Earth have been so incredible if hobbits weren’t so reclusive?

            The reader is an adventurer, traipsing into an unknown world. Were we going there ourselves, we would want an experienced guide who knew the place. We aren’t, though. We are following along the experiences of our guide. If we want to experience the new world for ourselves, we need our guide to look upon it with the same wide-eyed wonder as we would.

            The journey of the outsider brings a new level of depth to a story. It’s no wonder we see so much of it.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.