I was hanging out with this woman and we made some boffer swords. Now, these are soft… ish. They’re made from half-inch PVC with foam pool noodle on top and the whole thing wrapped in duct tape. You can take a direct hit from one of these without it seriously injuring you, but it’s not exactly pleasant. She had little to no experience with larping, but we took them out on the driveway and went at it a bit. I accidentally, and I really want to emphasize that, accidentally hit her full in the face with this foam bat. I apologized and we went again… and then I full-on hit her in the face again. And I apologized, and she smiled, and we continued to have a good time sword fighting.

So anyway, we got married and our daughter is almost five now.