767 Miles per Hour by Laura J. Oliver

The first time I attended the Renaissance Festival, I went alone and was astonished by the acres of beautiful woods, much like an English grove, where you can walk with ease among stands of magnificent maples and oaks, where stalls of fudge and funnel cakes, wands and woodworking, glass and jewelry craftsmen line the knolls. A handsome young lad in a waistcoat approached and asked if he could read my soul, but when we sat under a mossy tree, and he asked me to slip off my shoe, I realized he had said “sole.” Sigh. 

We see the world not as it is, but as we are. 

The second time I attended the Renaissance Festival, the woodlands had again been transformed into a 16th-century village, with Shakespearean stages and fortune tellers clustered in the glens. Henry the VIII presided over mead, mutton and jousting courtiers. I bought a wreath of wildflowers for my 8-year-old daughter’s hair and another for myself. Now we were maidens. I bought a sword for my 5-year-old son; now a slayer of dragons, defender of the realm.

The third time, I took not my own children but their children; in an effort to spend time together, to share an adventure. A woman giving directions at the guest services booth had eyes so blue, they cast spells. I remember that. And a vendor selling glass puzzles quietly confided she was from the future, but not in an alarming way. I remember thinking, could I prove she was not?

Then there was this year. Again, with my children’s children because our lives, yours and those you love, overlap in windows of time that don’t stay open forever. 

We went early to avoid the crowds and the drinking, but acres of cars were already parked in the grassy fields, and the longest lines were at the ID windows—where a royal stamp grants permission to imbibe copious quantities of 16th-century beer. 

Everyone was in costume—children, even infants—were dressed as fairies. Men wore swords, capes, and pantaloons, and virtually every female, no matter what the age, shape, or size, seemed to imagine herself as a buxom wench. It was as if people had been waiting all year to be someone else– a knight, a princess, or an entertainer at the royal court. 

We found seats in a wooded amphitheater to watch Jacques Ze Whipper. This charismatic and handsome young man worked as an NPR journalist, then left for a full-time career as a performer because it was more lucrative, and you could see why. He is so popular on the internet that every seat in the amphitheater was taken and those who couldn’t find a seat were happy to stand. I was forced to sit behind a tree and could only glimpse the stage by leaning heavily to my right, but I could certainly hear the act. A cracked whip travels at supersonic speed. The snap you hear is actually a sonic boom created when the tip of the whip moves so fast it breaks the sound barrier. Wielding something that lethal requires incredible precision.

Jacques can snap a whip traveling 767 miles per hour an inch from his face, for instance, dicing a piece of uncooked spaghetti held between his lips into one-inch segments before you can blink. That skill would be necessary for his most dramatic trick, and he needed a volunteer. 

A hundred hands went up, but the young guy he chose had second thoughts when he got on stage. He was to squat, facing the audience, with an inflated balloon held between his thighs while Jacques Ze Whipper attempted to hit that target (and nothing else) with a strategically aimed snap of his whip. The wave of energy flowing down the tapered leather to its tiny popper on the end accelerates at over 50,000 times the force of gravity. 

On the first attempt, the volunteer’s knees shook so badly he popped the balloon himself before Jacques could even raise the whip. The second time, the balloon exploded inches from the volunteer’s future children to riotous applause. 

Whips were eventually weaponized, but they were invented to be directional, not destructive, to simply guide. Through sound alone, they can induce a change in direction—snapped near a horse’s ear, or to the side of a herd of cattle. 

As we left the grove, I thought words are sound too, and a story can inspire a change in direction, a change in our feelings. As do other things that so quickly pass from moment to memory: my grandson’s smile at Jacques Ze Whipper’s terrible jokes, my granddaughter’s delight with the beaded bracelet that we found. 

As we neared the ramparts, we passed a fortune teller, but what can she reveal that I don’t already know?

Life is slipping by at the speed of light–love is faster than the speed of sound.