These are my People

So I've failed to give a promised recap of the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival--cause I'm lame--so in brief:

It was wonderful. Antonio Sacre was brilliant, Bil (yes that is with one l) Lepp was very good, and Kim Weitcamp is a new favorite.

On the last day of the Festival I was looking around at the crowd and noticed that I recognized a few of the people in the audience. I tend to follow around 2 or 3 storytellers at our Festival and so it was kind of a given that the people I recognized were fellow fans of my favorites. At this thought I smiled and said, to myself, "these are my people." Then I got to looking around at my people:

There was the guy in a tank top, shorts, tennis shoes, and athletic socks pulled up nearly to his knees.

There was the girl whose shirt was so low cut in the back that it exposed the entirety of her rather dingy looking white bra.

And there was the guy in shorts taking a nap in the grass with his knees up in the air showing off all kinds of stuff that I am diligently trying to forget.

Yep, these are my people.

I had a similar experience last night as I attended Brandon Sanderson's book talk at my library. I arrived early and so had prime seating for the show that was about to begin--and by show I'm not referring to Sanderson. I don't think I need to go in to any details about exactly what I saw. In fact, I believe I can just remind you that Sanderson writes fantasy and let your imaginations do my work for me (actually I will say just one thing: mothers please, please, please teach your sons to shower and wear deodorant on a daily basis).

As I sat there I once again couldn't help but think, yep, these are my people.

p.s. Please don't let this scare you off from attending a storytelling event as the vast majority of people don't fit into any of the above categorizations. The Goddess Divine mentioned in a story the other day that she believes that the IQ of those who shop at Wal-Mart is significantly lower than the average IQ and then quite nicely categorized her readers as being the outliers who bring said IQ up. You, my lovely readers, I am convinced could be the storytelling outliers who bring up the dressing standards of a few underachievers.

Don't worry too much about the fantasy community as I am pretty sure that is a lost cause.