Well, safety gear wasn't always required by USARS in roller derby... cuz USARS didn't even cover roller derby, back in the early days.
As mentioned before, "roller derby" was more like learning-to-skate-well practice for a long time. Still, even (especially) if you're just messing around you can get hurt.
People were staring to wonder... should we be wearing some kind of protective gear?
At first this was a very spicy, controversial subject.
There were people who felt they were too punk rock to need pads, and to require it would be trying to oppress their freedom of individuality!!!
Or something to that effect...
Hey, I was just as rediculous as the worst of them, I used to skateboard without pads all the time.
Now, so many knee slams later...I don't even remember what it's like to sit on my knees for more than 15 seconds!
And I'm also the genius who fought making mouth guards a requirement in Derby Dolls up till about... 2006. (always had trouble breathing with one before I found out about custom.)
Yah, sometimes you don't start out w/the ability to reason. It can be a learned trait...
Anyhow, a few broken tailbones later, it wasn't so hard to convince people that the new "protective gear" rule wasn't such a bad idea after all.
Next thing you knew even super vain 20 something year olds (oh, that was me) were lining up to wear protective diapers to practice!
So now you've heard it from someone who was there... roller derby used to be wild, I tell you. Feral!
Just wait till you hear about the fundraisers of the early days. Shocking!
Have a mothafuckinfantastic day today! Here's my parting gift:
And don't forget these little guys!
No comments:
Post a Comment