Triumphant Jammer Surprises Self, Delights Mother

[Ed. note: Readers not intimately familiar with the rules of roller derby might want to brush up before reading this exchange, which took place after a scrimmage bout at practice. Unfortunately your correspondent had spent the whole time wrangling with a PowerPoint presentation she had to give the following morning and so missed the whole thing. So you have to imagine Jo the Pummeler swooping up all sweaty and breathless and glowing with triumph to deliver the news.]

Mom! I was really good!

Awesome! Tell me about it.


So I had sucked, like, so bad -- I only went in twice during the whole bout. I would kind of get up and wobble and the jammer would go by and I would be like, "Oh no! I really want to sleep even though the jammer went by, and I am really tired because I did 190 laps in 30 minutes for the Skate-a-Thon just now."

And then in the last jam, the coach was like, "Does anyone want to go in?"

And I was like,  "I have nothing left to embarrass myself with, so I’m going to jam!" So it’s like the Sold girl! When I had nothing to lose I took the risk that saved my life! [Ed. Note: Sold is a book assigned in Language Arts class, about a girl from Nepal who is sold into slavery and winds up in a brothel.]

I was going around, and going around, and I would go past people, and keep going around, and I didn’t even notice. I was kind of imagining what everyone else was thinking, because when you see a girl who's not that good, you kind of label her as being not that good. And everyone had probably labeled me as that because of my wobbliness, and then when I went out and was really good, they must have been like, "Wow, she’s not sucky!"

What made it so different this time?

I think the difference between how I used to jam and how I jam now is: before, I would come up behind the pack and I would, like, check it out, and then slow down, and then figure out how I would get through. And then they were all, "We see you! We know what your plan is! Mwahahah!" But this time when I was like ten feet away from the pack I would see where I was going to go and then I went there. Then they would not say "Mwahahaha."

And I was through.

And that was that.

Don’t write that.

Okay.

[Ed. Note: When asked if her "What Would Marletta Do?" t-shirt might have contributed to her transformation on wheels, Josie expressed skepticism. Marletta is Orca's legendary founder -- originator of the phrase "Freedom with Responsibility" -- and still teaches kindergarten after forty years. Her 70th birthday last March inspired the distribution of commemorative "WWMD" t-shirts, one of which we had grabbed on our way out the door after reading in a last-minute e-mail that the girls were supposed to wear white shirts for the bout... "No," Josie shook her head. "Marletta's definitely Rock 'n' Roll, but she's not really Rollerderby. 'Hit her before she hits you'? That is not what Marletta would do."]