Having the personality for it

In another life, when I was teaching freshman composition during grad school, I totally lost my composure during a student conference. This one girl was struggling to understand how a person could write from different perspectives. I encouraged her to think about the different aspects of people's lives - how a person can be a student and a musician and a daughter and a Christian and a sandwich shop employee and a whatever - and to write from one of those perspectives. This girl is particularly gregarious and was a ringleader in the class, but she still seemed to be stuck writing only with the voice of a stereotypical freshman comp student - declarative sentences, unimaginative vocabulary, 3 to 5 sentences per paragraph.

I said, "Imagine I'm writing, and I want to describe, say, people trying to play pool at Quixote's after having too many shots of tequila." She kind of looked at me funny. I said, "Well, what's one perspective I could take on that?" (I'm thinking, "I could write from the perspective of a sober person sitting at the bar, as the bartender, as one of the drunk pool players, as a girl trying to have a heart-to-heart that keeps getting interrupted by the pool players' loud outbursts.)

My student said, "Uhh, umm, hmm. I don't know. I guess you would take the perspective that research shows that people get uncoordinated when they're drinking and that all these statistics show you should only have a certain amount of alcohol per day. You know - you would write like a teacher. I guess you would probably have to interview some students so you could know what it's like to go to a bar."

And that's when I lost it. I may have laughed until I cried. (Very professional.) This girl apparently thought I was only and always a teacher, and I was less than 3 years older than her! I asked her straight out, "So you think I just stay in this building and think of terrible grammar assignments and grade?" And then suddenly she understood.

This happens all the time in roller derby. I would like to meet a derby girl who tells people she plays roller derby and routinely gets the response, "Oh, that sounds just like you!" or "How fitting!"

My mom recently forwarded me an email from our old pastor's wife: "WOW ... Maria... who'd have thought that quiet little Brigitte would be a roller derby girl!!! I wouldn't have. She just didn't seem to have the personality for it." Every time I read that, I just snicker a little on the inside.

What is the personality for it? What kind of intensity do you hold inside? What kind of resolve? Are you on the track because you're an athlete, because you're stressed, because it's your only thing just for yourself, because all your friends are doing it, because you refuse to get older?

How funny it is that we think we know people even though we know only a few things about one or two facets of their personalities! How funny it is to think about all the ways in which others don't know us at all!

And that's the beautiful thing about it. A bunch of girls who have wildly different lives have somehow found each other and formed hundreds of leagues throughout the world. And suddenly we have something athletic and stress-relieving and important and fun and just for ourselves, and all those differences aren't that important.

And then we can have a good laugh weeks or months later, remembering our underestimating or just wrong first impressions of each other. And then we can get out there and hit some girls!