Roller Derby!

 

 "You got Joan a new gig at the Roller Derby rink?"  Thanks for asking... but, no.

Today, we made a trek into the big city.  Well, the bigger than our small town.  Harlingen.  There were some things we needed at the HEB and Sam's Club, and we have been putting it off, waiting for my digestion system to feel up to being away from a bathroom.  Today was that day.

"There's a Roller Derby league in Harlingen?"  Cool your jets, I'm trying to tell a story here.  And, no, there isn't a Roller Derby league in Harlingen.  Anything that sells food or gasoline is packed today - people gearing up for having big meals for the holiday and gassing up their cars/trucks to go over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house.

Every place we went to was packed.  "What does that have to do with Roller Derby?" you ask.  I'm getting there.  Shopping carts were full in HEB; at some point, when you can't get any more in the cart, apparently you are required to just clog up the aisles.  Parking your cart diagonally in the middle of the aisle to allow the fewest amount of people to get by.  Just like what blockers do on a Roller Derby team; there are 5 members on a team: 1 jammer, 1 pivot, and 3 blockers.  The goal of the blockers is to not allow the jammer from the opposing team to get past them.

"Golly, Jim, you know a lot about Roller Derby," you say.  That is true.  There is a story that Joan and I met in a strip club.  I'll get back to that.  She and her Roller Derby team came into the strip club where I was a featured performer.  As the jammer on the team, she can be quite a powerhouse - there is a rumor that she put a $1 bill in my g-string and asked for change... I can neither confirm nor deny that account.  I am apparently digressing once again... but, it is the holiday season and I like to entertain the youngsters with these "When I was your age..." stories. *

So... the blockers.  Both HEB and Sam's were full of 'em.  I still have some of my "tease and dodge" skills from the male exotic dancing, and I was able to fake and move around most of the blockers.  Sometimes, I was able to keep up with Joan as she tossed stuff into our cart.  What I am getting at: a lot of damn people getting in the way.

That said, we managed to get through HEB and Sam's, gas up the Equinox (gas prices are slowly dropping), and go to Chick-fil-A in less than 4 hours.  And that includes an hour there and an hour back.  Our skills from back in the day still come in handy occasionally.

We are stocked up enough that we should be able to go for a week, eating in holiday style, and not have to venture out again until after people have slogged through the After Christmas sales.

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* Some of the tales in this post may be along the line between totally made up and almost nearly true.