Knights in Shining Armour...

A funny thing happened to me on Friday night. I discovered I have a whole group of people concerned about my safety. This isn't just any normal group though, it's basically the male portion of our youth group. Let me give more detail.

Friday night was the youth group lock-in. What basically happens is the girls go to one house, the boys go to another and they get locked in. No one leaves until 7 the next morning when their parents pick them up. I ended up with the boys because I had gone to visit my friend Nicole. (The boys were at her house, and yes there were male chaperons too.) I hung out for a little while and played a lot of card games. At about 11:30 pm I realized I needed to go home soon but we were deep into SPOONS and I couldn't just get up and leave because I was winning. The next time I looked at the clock it was 2:30 and I really needed to go home to go to bed. I stood up to leave and announced I was going home. All the boys sitting around the table with me stood up and were like "NO!!" At first I was a bit shocked and couldn't figure out what their deal was, but then they got going on about "how there were bad men out there, and I was white and blonde and looked Dutch and would be a target and these bad men just wait in bushes to jump people..." Finally after about 10 mins of this and me promising I would be fine and them arguing with me, I gave up and promised to stay. They were very thankful that I wasn't leaving. I was however allowed to leave at first light. So we sat around for the rest of the evening playing cards and laughing. Basically one of the most entertaining evenings I've had in a long time. I was telling this story to my roommates the next day because even though they knew where I was, they didn't think I would be out that late. I had to explain that 3 or 4 high school/middle school boys appointed themselves my knights in shining armour. We got quite a laugh out of this.

This proves that chivalry isn't dead. You just have to teach at IAS to find it. And apparently be a white, blonde Dutch-looking target!