God damnit RJ, that thread made me miss derby.
The final nail in the skate was when we were in Vegas for Rollercon. It was this last trip we just came back from. Jagged Lil' Pill and I flew from Hawaii straight to Vegas. Rollercon is four days of workshops, drinking, partying and meeting up with rollergirls from around the country/world. Jagged had tickets, I didn't buy any but thought I'd have fun just hanging out anyway. Jagged had Tuacca (Tuacca Shame) house sitting and taking care of her dogs.
Tuacca (Melissa) is 21. A very young 21. Saturday she started getting text messages from Melissa asking if it would be okay if she flew to Vegas just for the day because she wanted to play derby in a bout with Fight Club (Fight Club is the A team Melissa usually doesn't get to play with). She said she was going to fly in play and fly out "it would only take six hours at the most". It was a strange request on many levels. Melissa doesn't have any money to begin with and the deal with the housesitting/dogs was made pretty clear. Jagged's (Erika's) dogs are more like her kids and she's really protective of them.
Erika said, no she wasn't comfortable with Melissa leaving the dogs. No response. We were in a group of people that were texting back and forth with Melissa talking about other things, but Erika couldn't get a response.
Basically, Melissa was already in Vegas. She dropped the dogs off at her sister's house without consulting Erika and hopped on a plane. Erika was furious, changed her tickets and left that night. She was feeling like she wanted to go home early anyway. This situation sealed the deal.
That's just one example of many of the drama/maturity level of alot of the girls. Not to mention, the league is run poorly, they're banking serious cash and have no transparent accounting system, and expect alot of time and effort on the part of the skaters to help run this "grass roots" sport.
Before I took this last month off, I was about to get voted into the league. This would mean, more volunteering and a deeper connection to the drama. I stepped back and asked myself if I loved this sport enough to make that commitment.
I did not.
For my $40 derby dues, I can join a co-ed hockey league and just play a sport and have fun. Mr. X got me the hockey skates and when we get through this round of Mr. X programming his voo doo for upcomming football season, we'll be hanging out at the park more and I'll be practicing. Now that Erika is seriously considering leaving (I'm pretty sure she will) I'm going to try to recruit her into roller hockey. I think we will be very good at checking players into the boards.
wha