Drinking from the Last Bottle

"To die among friends. Can a man ask more? Can the world offer less? Who wants to live 'til the last bottle is empty? It's all-for-one, d'Artagnan, and one for all." Said by Van Heflin as Athos in The Three Muskateers, 1945.

This is the quotation of the month in the Elfsea Tidings, a newsletter from the Barony of Elfsea in the Kingdom of Ansteorra (for those of you not in the SCA, this is the Fort Worth chapter of the Texas/Oklahoma division of the Society for Creative Anachronism). The quotation this month is provided by Don Alaric, who is a sword collector and Rapier Don, Rapier Marshall, and most likely a big fan of the Three Muskateers in just about any form (although he probably isn't crazy about the new Barbie version, where Barbies duel with a rhythmic gymnastics ribbon. You think I'm making this up, right?)

OK, I promise to stay away--far away--from Barbie today. I really love this quotation although I'm not sure why. I am not a "light fighter" or a rapier person, although I really enjoy watching it and I think my kids are interested in learning. I broke my ankle a few years ago and refused to have surgery to put a pin in the ankle because it was "borderline" according to the doctor (and I avoid surgery at all costs). Now the ankle is weak and aches in bad weather, and I am limping. So I am not exactly light on my feet and I am the only person I know that actually tripped and fell on her butt trying to do English Country Dancing (of course I was in a long skirt that was too long for me and Birkenstocks, not exactly Barbie's Twelve Dancing Princesses shoes). So I don't know what you think, but I personally think I would be a menace on the rapier field, and not in a good way (meaning, I would just fall on my ass and embarass myself and possibly accidently bump into someone and hurt them, not that I would actually be any good). Besides, I have heard that it takes muscles that I probably don't have any more. I don't know how many people out there doing it have had three miscarriages and the equivalent of two C sections and countless other abdominal procedures but probably not most of them. Although there are a lot of women who do fight rapier, most of them are younger than I am and I doubt if any of them have my checkered reproductive history.

So, I am hardly one of the Three Muskateers but I do like their spirit. I like those campy Three Muskateers movies from the 1970s, remember? I don't know the particulars but I seem to recall that Michael York (man, he was a hunk) was D'Artanan. I am sorry to say that I don't even know much about The Three Muskateers, other than that there are numerous movies and I believe that one of our SCA members owns ALL of them (EVEN Barbie, which he received as a joke). I don't even remember if there is a book, so let me know because my ignorance is showing and I am not in the mood to research it right now.

I got my temporary crown on today, finally, and let me say this, it was worse than the root canal. I just can't breathe very well during these procedures, and since I'm a mouth breather with asthma who is trying desperately to inhale gas through my nose so that I will be high enough to forget where I am, and it just doesn't work that well...well, I am glad that's over. I never put on the new patient forms that I'm an attorney because it makes people nervous, but I did mention "JCPenney Legal Department" to the dentist (as in, "the dentist I had when I was working for the JCPenney Legal Department"--this makes it sound like I was a secretary or something--. The hygenist actually said she thought I could do this procedure without anesthesia and I said, "well, we will leave that to the dentist--but you are using gas, right?" She seemed surprised but wheeled the tank in. After the dentist spoke with me he not only numbed me but in the middle of the procedure he had to use a bunch of topical anesthesia. She blew a little air on me early on and I jumped about five feet out of my chair, and this was after I was already on the gas and only had one cup of coffee. I think if they could have knocked me out completely they would have.

So I'm not brave like D'Artanan, at least not in the dental chair. And don't put me underground in corridors either very often. Once my husband and I went to the Scarborough Ren Faire's SAPA event (a dinner for Friends of the Faire and the Scarborough Academy of Performing Arts cast) that we do every year. Since we didn't have the kids we went through the Tower of Terror, which is basically a medieval and renaissance execution museum. Now the exhibits don't bother me--they are a little cheesy anyway, and I know most of the methods used because I've seen those History Channel specials and read all that Elizabethan history and everything. I saw The Tudors. I know about the boiling of poisoners in oil and all that stuff, and while I wouldn't want to witness it personally, it really doesn't bother me to talk about it or even see a dramatization on TV. But the Tower of Terror runs underground and we were in these little corridors all by ourselves. I think if lots of people had been in there with us screaming or something I would have been fine, but all I could think about were all the bugs and worms and stuff in the soil, and all the cobwebs since no one had been in there since the previous Halloween, and it just totally creeped me out. I saw the replica of the crown jewels at the bottom (like the Tower of London has only I have seen the real thing before), and I was OUT OF THERE. Yuck. Will not be going back in there any time soon.

So cremate me, please, when I'm gone. The idea of those bugs and things and being in the ground with them is just too much to bear. I think it's a holdover from that song we used to sing in elementary school, you know: "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinnocle in your snout." OK, even in elementary school it made me want to vomit.

And the Three Muskateers quote above is another, earlier version of the Klingon: "It's a Good Day to Die." This is also lifted by Little John in the BBC Robin Hood series (do those Brits think we don't know that they too have watched Worf and Next Generation???)

Of course, this is clearly a sentiment that is more likely to be expressed by men. I don't happen to think dying among friends is all that great. Maybe because I don't want to die any time soon. I guess dying among friends is better than dying among enemies, and you can hear this same sentiment echoed when Gimli and Legolas talk in the movie version of The Return of the King, as they are all about to get blown away in Mordor, when he says to Legolas that while he never planned to die along side an Elf, dying along side a friend is something that he can do. So men highly value this concept of dying among friends. Which is interesting because a lot of men, like my husband, have very few male friends and their relationships are very different than friendships between women. I'm not saying that male friends never talk about anything serious but a lot of times they do talk about things like sports, etc. and not very often about feelings. Maybe this is a stereotype but I don't think so.

For one thing, if you die in battle, you may die among friends, but isn't the last thing you see your enemy? (Unless you get shot in the back or something, of course).

Also, "Can the world offer less?" Well, yes in fact, it can. How about dying of cancer? Dying in a car wreck? Dying in a stupid accident (like jumping off a cruise ship because you are drunk). Dying unloved or unremembered? Dying estranged from your loved ones, or some of them? Not having your body found for a week because you were an unemployed recluse with very few friends? Yes, the world can definitely offer less in terms of the manner of your death, you had better believe it. Dying in battle is beginning to sound pretty damn good.

My husband and I discussed this quote and whether or not we agreed with it. (OK, I have already said it, we are pointy headed geeks. While other people would be having sex we are having discussions like this). The part that really intrigued us was "Who wants to live 'til the last bottle is empty?" My husband said, "I do. That means I drank it."

I think he has a point. Of course, if it's Geritol or Milk of Magnesia, maybe not so much. But give me a good bottle of Crown or Shiner Bock (and spare me the hangover or the gas from the beer) and I think I agree with him. I think I want to drink the last drops from the last bottle. For me, it's never a Good Day to Die. It just means my time is up and I haven't accomplished everything I meant to accomplish. This doesn't mean that I'm afraid of death, far from it. I'm more afraid, I think, of those bugs underground than I am of death. Presumably, as Christians, we will be taken to a better place and so on, and be with God, so there is nothing to be afraid of (assuming that we aren't going to Hell, of course).

And I just don't believe I'm going to Hell, sorry. I guess my concept of Hell is still very much like that in The Divine Comedy and I just don't believe that I am going there. I'm not a great person and I'm not a great Christian but overall I don't think I'm that bad.

My favorite joke about hell: a guy is getting the tour of Hell and he is asked if he wants to be in the room where everyone is head down in excrement or the one where everyone is at a cocktail party and merely standing around in excrement. He choses door number 2 (sorry for the joke there). Anyway, after he's there about five minutes having a nice cold brewski, one of the devil's messenger boys comes in and says, "Cocktail hour is over, everyone back on your heads!"

Hell is probably just a really cold place where you are not only alone but also remorseful for your lack of kindness to others on earth when you had a chance. Kind of like a cross between Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Dickens, only without Marley's chain.

Well, that's enough about the afterlife. I think it's time for one more bottle.

Pleasant Valley Mom, going back to the Gulf War Sewing and trying to Catch Up on LOST, which I managed to sleep through last night.