I often think about a thing that happened when I was still a kid and pretty new to Warhammer.
There were this FLGS located pretty much exactly inbetween my school and my home. I didnt do very well in school, my grades were okish but I skipped class A LOT. Oh the joy of being a girl with comically autistic traits in the 90’s, my baby brother got a diagnosis, I got a “why are you so weird, stop it”.
But I spent a lot of time in this store, and im genuinely surprised they let me do that. I was a kid, I couldnt buy very much. I just sat there and painted or played a few games. And sometimes I got to build stuff for the store (very exciting). They even convinced me to send in a contribution to Golden Daemon (I did not win, not even close 😂)
Even back then I was obsessed with oldhammer stuff. And the store owner who had been into nerd stuff for decades thought that was really fun and says something along the line of “hey I have a few first edition WHFB armies in a box in the basement, if you want tou can cone down with me and look at them.
So there I go, 14 year old girl, with this 40+ year old man into a shady ass basement to look at minis.
And the minis were soo awesome, he was a very good painter. He also found a “how to paint minis”- pamphlet from like the 80’s and gave it to me (boy do I wish I still had it)
But like, what was I thinking. If he had been any kind of shady guy, things could have ended so badly. I cringe just thinking about it. And I wasnt a naive kid either, ever since I hit puberty at like 11 ive had grown ass men grope me on the street before. I knew all about “bad men”.
But shoutout to that store for being one of the first places in my life where I felt appreciateed and not not a burden. Where people would greet me excitedly whenever I showed up. My guess is they saw a lot of themselves in that lonely and weird kid.
I would link to it, but it closed down over a decade ago, and I heard the owner passed away. And that is such a damn shame because the world needs more people like him. That creates safe spaces for the weird and the lost.