frag-ile sound: n. an easily destroyed vibration, delicately flawed.
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LIVING HISTORY 101:
Explaining Your Hobby
It’s Memorial Day weekend, and you are getting your things together to come to the Tennessee Pass Memorial Services when your best friend calls to invite you to his cookout. Buddy-O can’t understand why a non-veteran, non-descendant is so vehement about attending this service.
You are sitting in front of the person you hope will soon be your boss, and she’s asking questions regarding every line on your resume. She gets to the bottom where it mentions this hobby and a flicker of real interest finally enters her voice. “What is living history, and why have you been doing it for the past 5 years?”
You are cleaning your M-1 Garrand on the living room coffee table when your mother comes over for a visit. She looks at the gun, the military history books, and eyes your regulation hair cut with concern. Patting you on the hand, she asks if there is anything she should know.
Living history is a hobby/obsession/lifestyle that can be explained a number of ways. If a new devotee of living history isn’t wary, he/she could easily lead family and friends to stage an anti-cult intervention. Upon learning that there are quite a few of us armed to the teeth, even in the civilized parts of the world, others may find reason to worry about a retro-militia.
Living history can be described to your buddy as a group of people dedicated to the preservation of history for the future generations, by the present generations, in honor of the past generations. We attend 10th Mountain reunions and memorials to show our respect for the men and women who actually gave their lives, and to give them tangible evidence that their sacrifices are being well remembered.
To your boss-to-be, you can seal the interview by highlighting your participation with a non-for-profit group that spends a large percentage of their time teaching American history to children. Tell her that we’ve been recognized by the veterans and the Library of Congress for our portrayal of the 1940’s military. As to why you’ve been doing it for all this time: it is a great way to interact with like minded people and simultaneously teach what you know.
Explain to dear Mum that you are a part of a group that combines historical research with collections of military paraphernalia to teach history in an interesting fashion. Oh! And mention the kids again, Moms love that bit. You might also mention that as a group of collectors we’ve often collaborated with museums in order to share our specialized knowledge of the past. Show off the blank rounds and explain again that weapons are for show, not for use.
What we do is unusual, and even people who have some idea of what you do may be confused by it if they haven’t seen you in action. So, in conclusion, the best way to explain what we do to the laymen is to invite them along. Who knows, they might just join up!
(As accepted by The Blizzard)