It did not get better. As school went on, I became untroubled by friends to partner with, and I stayed short and slow. You know the cliche about the kid who always gets picked last for the team? That was me. Between Mean Girls armed with wooden machetes in grade school and enforced short-short wearing by the faculty perv in high school, I hated gym classes with undying passion. I finally figured out how to avoid field days by hiding behind shrubbery - crouching on gravel under a boxwood was easily preferable to a 1,000-meter run as far as I was concerned.
So I got through the rest of high school and college without any sporting activity, after eliminating from consideration any schools that had a physical education requirement or active orientation. Somewhere in adulthood I lost the metabolism that kept me at 90 pounds no matter what, but didn't worry too much about that. I took kickboxing lessons for awhile, but the studio got bulldozed and turned into tacky condos. I joined the Society for Creative Anachronism with the intent of taking up fighting, but armor was expensive and I became more enamored with the crafty stuff. I'd stopped actively avoiding sports, but I didn't have to anymore, since they weren't trying to drag me out of my hiding place in the boxwood.
Then I read about roller derby. A few years ago, Indianapolis Monthly ran an article about the Naptown Roller Girls, and made roller derby sound like a heck of a lot of fun. It wasn't that much of a stretch - my older sister played hockey when I was a little kid, and I'd long thought that if I were going to play a sport, it might as well be something seriously aggressive. I lived in Lafayette - home of the Brawlin Dolls - at the time, but worked nights so I couldn't go to practices. So derby was more something to talk about than something to do.
When we moved to Bloomington I looked for a local roller derby team, but there wasn't one. It looked like roller derby was just going to be one of those silly things I talked about but never did. And then I met KateThulu. A friend brought her to a party we were throwing, in one of those perfect serendipitous moments that changes your life forever - because Kate just happened to mention roller derby. Kate skates with the Twin City Derby Girls, but she said there were women trying to start a league right here in Bloomington-Normal. I let my shyness get the better of me and didn't track them down over the summer, but I knew to keep my eyes open, and found out about their tryouts in October 2010....
....to be continued....
