CATASTROPHE THERÆ
#1627bce
As I have the great good fortune to belong to a league filled with amazing people at every level of experience–all of whom put in phenomenal time and effort not only into skating, but into helping build SFV, I think it was quite natural to suppose, when I got the email, that it was a general announcement. I had to read it a couple times before I got to the part where I went, “Wait, what? Me?”
Well, zowie.
I remain more than a little flabbergasted, but I am so very glad to be a part of this fantastic collection of women and men.
As for my derby name, bane that it is of several an unfortunate announcer (e.g., “Catastro…phh…three?”), it’s a pun on Catastrophe Theory (and pronounced just like it), which is more or less when geometry stops working, which is more or less appropriate. In Latin (really it’s Latinized Greek) it’s a reference to the eruption that destroyed the island of Thera, Minoan civilization along with it, and, if you like, sunk Atlantis. Also, it has “catastrophe” in it. Also, I am a huge, huge nerd.
I like jamming best, so, naturally, I spend most of the time working on blocking. No, really. Being an effective blocker is sort of fundamental to the sport–and, as I become a less dreadful blocker, so too I get better at jamming, and just generally much more of an asset to my team. But I have a lot of room for getting better at pretty much EVERYTHING (especially, well, everything). Happily enough, I actually am getting better, too, and learning new things every time I put on skates (or don’t put on skates; I have learned a lot NSOing too, and just going to bouts and watching).
I spent about a year and a half trying to make it to Derby Por Vida classes at the Doll Factory [read: I made it through two-thirds of a session, and then went to a couple more first classes], but was flummoxed by the timing and distance. And then one magical night I heard about a new league starting up in the valley. I emailed the next day, and went to my first practice with SFV the day after that. And here I am, thirteen and a half months later, a Valley Girl born and bred…and often battered and bruised.
I still, however, have had way more in the way of scrapes and swollen things and even broken bones of little consequence from playing kickball, than derby. Go figure. I’ve been playing kickball for six years, and it’s a great lot of fun. You just have to remember you’re not wearing knee pads when you dive for a ball, and that it’s not, technically, a contact sport when some silly fielder is standing with both feet on the base.
Have I mentioned that I’m a nerd? I knit, too. Lots and lots of hats and octopi and Loch Ness Monsters. Some day, I will come up with a pattern for a lovely little sea otter.
In the meantime, there is a lot of derby to look forward to, and I am so excited about all the crazy wonderful things happening with SFV in 2013. <3