(no subject)

Emptying out a bag I brought to the Assembly that I need to use today, I find it contains:

- wig
- rosin
- replacement waistcoat buttons
- cock

*headdesk*

At least I thought to empty it.

St. Crispian's Day

I think I tell this story every year, and every year, it's a little different because different parts of it seem to matter.

I have a diploma from two different high schools, through a quirk both of the NYC public school system and the way I chose to deal with my education. At one of the schools, that allowed me to work full-time my senior year and just write papers about it, valedictorian and salutatorian were by audition, which of course I did. I was told I just simply wouldn't connect with the majority of students at this second school of mine (a truth I've really only understood more recently), but would I be willing, as salutatorian to read the St. Crispian's Day speech for a retiring teacher I didn't know, who was deeply fond of it.

Certainly, I said blindly, not having read it myself. I could pronounce words was really all there was to their selection of me.

So I practiced it, lots, and read this thing, and felt foolish because I was so slight and female and didn't even know the teacher and was there to speak so grandly of such things as were so barred to me. But, of course, I found it, and did it well, and creeped the hell out of my friends who came from our other school to see. Even if I did mispronounce Gloucester. Someone should have bloody told me! The vacuum of a bookish child that.

It was a big moment in a dingy auditorium. It didn't matter at all, what with my middling grades, my determination to have a right and proper career (I was going to be a war reporter and get shot at!) and a university chosen out of expediency and laziness. The teacher teared up and hugged me. And I didn't know him, and felt even shorter. And like most big moments, I didn't get it, until its recollection circled back at least half a dozen times more.



This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.