A Pillow Book from the Land of Artichokes

Monday, September 23, 2002

On Roller Derby Queens

When I was seven, my overwhelming ambition in life was to become a Roller Derby Queen. It was 1973, I'd just seen The Kansas City Bomber (starring Raquel Welch) on T.V., and at that moment my future destiny suddenly became stunningly apparent. This, despite the fact that I'd already racked up a pretty hefty eyeglass prescription and was clearly a cut-and-dried personification of the nerdy bookworm type, really didn't seem to pose a conceptual dilemma for me in terms of incongruities, I don't think. At least not at the time. Roller Derby Fever had bit me bad and I wanted to be a trash-talking, body-slamming, cat-fighting, bad-ass Roller Derby Mama. I wanted to experience bruised and bloody victories and bone-crushing defeats in seedy, sleazy roller derby arenas, and be locked in ongoing grudge matches with vicious arch-nemeses who had names like Honey Sanchez, Patti "Moo Moo" Cavin, or "Horrible Hog-Hank" Hopkins. After considerable lobbying, I managed to extricate a pair of roller skates from my parents for Christmas that year (although they were the "strap-on" kind that were belted on over one's tennis shoes, and in this sense, highly unsatisfactory), and began my self-imposed training sessions in the basement, skating round and round -- practicing my killer elbow jabs and body-slamming techniques along the way to vanquish my imaginary competitors. So . . . okay . . . in the end I became a poet, and an English professor, of all things, and not a Roller Derby Queen, but still, nonetheless . . . in my heart of hearts, lurks the indefatigable pulse of a Kansas City Bomber.

Posted by Artichoke Heart | 11:26 PM |