Roller Derby Goddess in My Mind

If you're like me and...ahem...in your 40's, you have probably at some point had at least a tiny bit of what is popularly known as a "mid-life crisis". A mid-life crisis, even a tiny one, is that moment when you realize that you will never be 25 or a size 6 again. You look in the mirror and sigh at the bags and sags and you vow to do something drastic to CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

That moment came for me a couple of months ago. I joined a popular weight loss program and started exercising...again...for AT LEAST the 14th time. The trouble was as it always has been that I HATE EXERCISING! With a passion. With the white hot passion of a thousand burning suns. With the white hot passion of a thousand burning suns in a desert during a drought. Do you get my meaning? I find no joy in it. It's hard. It involves discomfort and sweating and huffing and puffing. I like to huff and puff if it's during the commission of something fun, like, say...sex or maybe...bank robbery, but otherwise my motto has always been: I huff and puff for no one nor for any reason. And, sweating? Even if it's to the oldies, or in my case to the 80's, it should only be done by men who have Adonnis-like bodies and who are employed in mowing my lawn and doing other manly chores around my yard without the benefit of their shirts and while wearing very tight shorts. Otherwise, sweating, like huffing and puffing, is right out.

So, we've established that I detest physical movement due to its unfortunate tendency to force me to sweat and become red in the face. Unfortunately, we also need to address the fact that fat, once it finds its way to the posterior portion of my body, my sit-upon, my bum, my ass, my heinie, if you will, it is completely impossible to make leave of its own volition. I could eat a single baby carrot per day and drink nothing but water or Diet Sprite for the rest of my natural life and my ass would still approximate the size of a small state, like, maybe Rhode Island. So, it is essential in my efforts to get the fat to shove off my butt for me to get some form of exercise along with my consumption of calorie and portion controlled, good for you, delicious, i.e. tasteless, diet food to further my weight loss efforts.

You see my conundrum, don't you? Surely, you do. How does Sherri Lynn regain the svelte, attractive silhouette of her youth if she hates to exercise, but exercise is essential to her weight loss efforts? Well, truthfully, I probably won't regain the exact body of my youth because I've had kids and that particular natural feminine phenomenon does horrendous things to your muscles and ligaments that most ladies just don't snap back from. (We're not even going to address what it does to your sanity. That's a whole 'nuther can of worms that we just don't have time to delve into right now.)

Anyway, got lost there for a second. Several months ago, I hit upon the most brilliant idea of my lifetime (there's a touch of sarcasm there) to easily and happily lose weight and get into shape and start a lifetime love affair with a new hobby. I decided, quite on the spur of one whimsical moment, that joining the Roller Derby would not only fulfill the exercise portion of my weight loss goal, but it would provide me with an outlet for that...um...shall we say...sanity problem I spoke of earlier. I researched the roller derby leagues in my area and around the country and found that it didn't matter that I was fat and 40-ish. I could still be a real bitchen mama on the rink. And, even though, my darling husband, Jeff, greeted my aspirations with, "Sherri Lynn, have you lost your freaking mind?" I was bound and determined that I was going to be a Roller Derby Goddess...or at least a Roller Derby Queen...ok, well maybe just a Roller Derby Princess, then.

I chose my official roller derby name: Ima Whino. I went out and bought roller skates, the quads not the inlines. You can't roller derby on inlines. I bought the protective equipment, pads and a helmet. I even thought of dying my hair blue and getting a tattoo or two and maybe another piercing...yeah...yeah! That's the ticket. See, I got sucked right into the roller derby fantasy. I imagined myself flying around that rink, knocking other, less coordinated skaters around and leading my team to victory after victory. I imagined the beer parties afterwards. I imagined the leagues of adoring fans. I imagined the congratulatory kisses of those Adonnis bodied men...

OK, so I have quite the imagination.

On a bright spring morning, the day after I purchased the skates and pads, I went for my first practice skate at a local county park. The park has a very nice blacktop WALKING trail. Notice how the word "walking" in the previous sentence is in all caps. That will become important later in the story. Trust me. So, I drive my big old lady Buick to the park and park it neatly in the third space from the entrance. I don all the padding from knees to elbows and I carefully laced up those beautiful, white, sexy skates with the purple wheels. I latched the helmet onto my noggin. I was ready. I did a couple of glides back and forth around my car and happily noted how flat and smooth the parking lot was and how my skates worked so perfectly and how I COULD SKATE JUST LIKE I DID ON MY BACK PORCH WHEN I WAS TWELVE AND WEIGHED 88 LBS AND DIDN'T WEAR PADS OR A HELMET OR PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT OF ANY KIND, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!

I carefully made my way over to the WALKING path (see, right there, "walking" automatically capitalized itself). I carefully started "skating" down the path. As I skated, I began to notice how difficult it was to skate on this particular path. I began to notice all the flaws in the blacktop. Like, you know how blacktop gets really, really hot in Texas in the summer so it expands, and then in the Texas winter, it contracts, so pretty soon, your perfect blacktop has little holes in it and cracks approximating the size of the GRAND FREAKING CANYON and other minor flaws that might not mean anything to a WALKER or a RUNNER or a BIKER, but can wreak havoc for someone like, you know, a SKATER?? Yeah. I think you are beginning to see where I'm going with this.

It was as I was nearing the first bend in the path that I started thinking that perhaps this wasn't the most brilliant idea of my lifetime. Perhaps this was really not a good idea at all. Perhaps this was the stupidest thing I had ever attempted. Perhaps I should maybe turn around and go back the 200 yards to my car and... Whoa. WHOA! WWWHHHHOOOOAAA! (Imagine both arms windmilling backwards almost faster than you can see.) WHAM. CRACK. OOF. OW...

Now. Imagine me sitting there in all my big assed glory. On my butt. In my little skater's outfit. In a county park. As bikers and walkers calmly navigate around my broken armed self. I sat there stupidly contemplating my skates. Thinking to myself that I should not panic just because I couldn't feel my fingertips. Trying to reason with what I think is a very smart brain that I needed to get back to the car and drive the hell away from the park, but thinking also that in order to do that I would have to get the bloody skates off and...

Did you know that you can't remove lace up skates with only one working hand? Um...yeah. This one I know from experience.

Pretty soon, while my pathetic, broken armed self was sitting there, just sitting there, enjoying the gentle breeze, enjoying...well, really, NOT enjoying the numbness spreading up my right arm from my fingertips, I looked out across the soccer field and saw, wonder of all wonders, a golf cart with two little County guys swiftly approaching like knights on an electric, wheeled steed come to rescue the fair young maiden...okay, so really not so fair at this point and not young and not lithe or full of grace, either.

About 20 yards from me, they slowed their mighty steed and inquired, "Fair maiden, doth thou require assistance?" No, really, what they said was, "Ma'am...are you hurt?" To which I replied, "No...just thought I'd sit here with my big posterior planted firmly on the hot asphalt and enjoy this particular view of the park, while cradling what I accutely surmise is a broken right arm." No, really, I wasn't in any position to be sarcastic, what I said very calmly was, "Yes. I seem to have broken my arm." Like...really, dude, I have NO EARTHLY IDEA how it happened. Pay no mind to those stupid, ugly, crappy assed, wheeled death monsters on the end of my legs with some of their wheels still spinning...happily...crazily...maniacally, if you will.

"Can we give you a ride to your car?"

"Yes, that would be good. But first, I need help getting these effing skates off." OK, so maybe the "effing" part was only said inside my head.

And, so, they hopped like good little County hobbits out of their magical golf cart steed and popped my skates off like they did it every day, flung the skates in the back of the cart, gallantly assisted my hobbling, completely humiliated 40-something self slowly back into the front seat of the golf cart and went winging away across the soccer field to my vehicle like Pegasus winging toward Mount Helicon, where they helped me out of the cart and assured themselves that I wasn't suffering from a head injury and wasn't intent on suing the County for my own stupidity.

Then, they winged away again from whence they came and I stood there in my sports socks in the parking lot. Dumbfounded in front of my old lady Buick and wondering just how the bloody hell I was going to drive home with a broken arm. I will spare you the details of how I called my younger brother and broke down and sobbed on the phone to him, all bravery completely escaping me now that the general public no longer needed to be fooled that I was calm, cool and copasetic, and begged that I needed him to come and take my stupid ass to the hospital because I had just broken my arm roller skating in the park.

And, when my darling husband, Jeff, asked later, "Did you see what you tripped over?" I was able to answer him confidently through the drug induced haze of some really interesting legal pharmaceuticals, although I might have slurred a bit, "Yeah. Some big ol' stupid air molecules got in my way."

Thus, a lesson learned. It's called a WALKING park for a reason.