Samuel Dragon
Samuel Dragon was four years old when he started going to SCA events with his family. Eight years later he received his AOA. How did this happen to a 12 year old boy, you might ask? Well, it happened something like this. Early one morning at Egils, before the rest of his encampment was awake, there arose a noise from a neighboring camp. Samuel woke up and being a curious boy he quietly slipped out of his tent to go see what had happened.
It seems that a few “Gentlemen” had been up all night drinking alcohol, and had started to argue. Other adults stood there watching and stopped one of them from swinging live steel at the other. But no one noticed, at first, that the other one had walked off into the reservoir, except for Samuel. He followed the drunken young man out into the water and tried to talk him back to shore. Somehow he got the man to come into the shallows to talk some more. There were adults standing on the shore line, concerned about the boy and the man, but worried that their interference might cause someone to get hurt, besides the boy was doing very well. The drunken young man took his pants off to “swim around a bit”. Samuel didn’t think that would be a good idea so he tried to stop him. The adults on the shore jumped in to drag the drunken man ashore when he swung his pants at the boy barely missing him. People brought Samuel and the drunken man ashore, wrapped them in blankets and sat them beside a nice fire. The appropriate people where called, and both of them were checked out. The drunken man had to go to the hospital; I heard that he was on the verge of hyperthermia complicated by the amount he had had to drink.
The next day, I think, Samuel found a wallet with $20 in it. It had no ID or other way to discover who it belonged to, so he took it to lost and found.
It’s hard for me to remember the rest of the event, Samuel is my son, because I had a family to care for and was worried about a cough Samuel had developed(It turned out to be nothing). Samuel was called into court, and his story was told. Was it the King who did the honors? I can’t remember for sure. I later learned that all the talk was to give the Queen and her scribe’s time to finish Samuel’s scroll. Samuel was one proud little boy that day, but not as proud as his Mom was.