We were back on the first floor, wandering around outside con suite, when ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunny_hugger clutched my arm and hid behind me. I didn't know what to suspect. I thought she might have tripped and needed my hold. Or, possibly, one of the few villains who've intruded on our life might have been there. We knew there was one slated to be at AnthrOhio (where we went last weekend), a person who'd been consistently abusively nasty to us for years. But I hadn't heard rumors anyone unpleasant would be at Motor City Fur[ry] Con, and given its small, local nature, didn't imagine anyone would.
Nothing quite so sinister. But mysterious anyway. My second thought was close.
It was a student.
bunny_hugger had thought for years about what might happen if someday one of her students happened to be at the con. It's not like there aren't furries at her school, and while the school is maybe two hours from the con venue, it's not like that's an enormous distance, especially if you're staying over the weekend. She thought it might just be inevitable. And here, for once, a current student was there.
They didn't see her. We think. We wondered if they'd even recognize her in such an alien context. The day went on without our seeing them again, or their, so far as we know, seeing her.
Sunday, they saw her. Just a nod in passing, and she nodded back. And wondered how this would affect their professor-student relationship. Back in the day the standard was to never ``out'' a furry who didn't open up to it first, but the Millennial generation has its own customs about what circles of privacy are or should be. What might they say in class on Tuesday, or afterwards?
Nothing, it turns out.
Perhaps being openly nonbinary encourages someone to instinctively respect other people's social boundaries. Or maybe they're just not the sort to assume having a curious interest in common alters the hierarchical relationship.
So, that was that. We went for dinner, going across the street again to the Indian place that's in the gas station's convenience store. This may sound odd, but it's really good Indian food, the dining treat of the con for us. We'd get dinner there Sunday night too, even though Saturday (I think) they mistook my order and put something with chicken in. I fault my pronunciation. (We try to eat vegetarian, but aren't going to waste food after an accident like that.)
While eating, and spreading the good word about the place, bunny_hugger spotted a drinking card game going on. I forget which one it is; I think something like Kings. The point of it is, dealing a card at random and on each face value you have to do something special. Set your hands on the table, clap your hands, take a shot, take a drink, so on. bunny_hugger slipped into it, saving the table a bit as there were some cards that implied doing stuff if a woman was at the table and now they could be done.
Part of the game is setting custom rules, too (when a King comes up, I suppose). And somewhere along the lines somebody had a brilliant innovation: no cussing. If you cuss you have to take a drink. Which, since it's a game about responding fast to random prompts, produces a lot of frustrating and swear-worthy moments. Some other brilliant rules included having to drink while holding the glass with only your index fingers and thumbs, and --- bunny_hugger's inspiration --- that after taking a drink you had to salute her. Something like that. The result was this raucous, giddy night. I don't know if I'll ever be part of a drinking card game like that, but if I ever am: ``no cussing'' is definitely the rule to put in.
And then we eventually got to the dance. And a happy surprise, too. Normally the dance is set to your modern sort of heavy-beat techno music whose production value I understand but that all sounds kind of the same to me. This time, the DJ was doing a mix of 80s songs. Just like the SiriusXM New Wave station was doing on Saturday nights, the Safety Dance. Yes, the ``Safety Dance'' was there. Also ``Video Killed The Radio Star'', giving bunny_hugger the chance to open up her hoodie and show off her Buggles t-shirt to the DJ, who certainly did not wake up expecting that to happen.
We've said for years that we would love a dance that got old-school songs like a heavy 80s track and here we got it. Was it as good as we'd have hoped? Yes, it absolutely was.
Trivia: The Latin zodiac sign Virgo, the Virgin, was in Sanskrit `Kanya', and in the Babylonian scheme `Furrow'. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.
Currently Reading: The History of the Calculus and its Conceptual Development, Carl B Boyer.
PS: Something Cute I Never Noticed Before About Infinite Sums but that my reading made me aware of.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-06-01 05:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-06-10 05:48 am (UTC)