My title isn’t a set up to be a joke. It literally happened this weekend at a rendezvous in Albert Lea, Minnesota. A rendezvous is a place where people reenact America history from frontier life. There are Native American tee-pees, civil war military presentations, knife and ax throwing stands, cannon fire, blacksmith shops, and cooking everything over a flame. My favorite part was watching people dressed up as historical characters, acting, and answering questions in character.

I saw Abe Lincoln playing with children and saying he always makes time for the children. I guess politicians have been using children for photo-ops for a long time. I saw Teddy Roosevelt answer questions about the Panama Canal, and being a Rough Rider. I only got to see Ben Franklin from a far, but I did get him to wave at me. (Pictures of my trip at the bottom of the blog)

My First reaction was, this in an odd way to spend your weekends, and what would cause people to spend their time making a belt buckle the old fashioned way. The more time we spent there, the more I kept pointing out hats. Like a guy with a buffalo fur hat complete with buffalo horns coming out the side, the guy carving a spoon out of a block of wood, a women wearing the traditional garb making dough for bread. I kept seeing smiles, I kept hearing laughter, and I kept on enjoying myself.

I bet these same people would find it odd that I still play video games with my best friend. I bet they might find it weird that I have had entire conversations with my best friend about a video game basketball player, Reginald Jacobs. This character has become such a part of our lives that I had a t-shirt made of this imaginary video character. Every time we bring this guy up we end laughing, smiling, and enjoying ourselves. Anne loves interior design, and art. I like art and I like cool decorations but I love tagging along with her because of the smile and joy it brings to her face. She enjoys it so much, I end up having a great time as well. It’s funny how when we do things that we love, we end up having a positive impact on others.

As long as the activity doesn’t have a negative effect on others, we would be better people if we allowed others to enjoy what they do. When Anne asked me to the rendezvous, I thought this would be an easy blog to write. I would write about how we really don’t need much material stuff to live and be happy. That idea was blown out of the water while watching people do something they obliviously love. As I left the event, my prevailing thought was I hope Ben, Abe, and Teddy keep doing their thing, because we are all better people when we get to do our thing.