I’m not even meant to have a derby name yet. I haven’t quite passed Minimum Skills, so it’s only a provisional name. Technically, I have no right to write this post.
However, I am going to, because I’m never going to skate under my own name, and here’s why.
Throughout my 30+ years on this planet, I have had a chequered relationship with sports and exercise. As a child, I was un-co-ordinated, weak and always small for my age. School PE was hell, and I vowed I would never do sport again. Until I got to university, and got into football. Although I trained hard, I always lagged behind the others in skill. The other girls I played with were friendly, don’t get me wrong, but I was tolerated as a team member rather than embraced as a team-mate. Casual five-a-side football was easier and more fun, but that petered out.
Back at university, I decided to take the plunge with sports again, and trained in capoeira for a year and a half. The other members of the group were encouraging, and I made progress, but again, I seemed to fall behind very easily, and never mastered a couple of the basic skills. This was despite what I now know to be excessive amounts of hard training. It was during this time that a few drastic things happened to me, health-wise, which involved massive weight loss. I had to stop training completely, and took it easy physically for the best part of a year. It turned out that I had a dodgy thyroid gland, which was treatable with medication.
Okay, you can put your violin away now. This isn’t a sob story. And here’s what it has to do with my derby name.
Back to my healthy weight, and curious, I was accepted by MRD as a beginner. It has been hard work, and I’m not there yet, but all of a sudden, I’ve found that I have, for the first time in my life, the physical reactions of a normal person. I try a move a few times, and it gets easier. I make a mistake and fall on my bum, but I can get up and avoid the situation next time. I skate laps, and gradually, my total is creeping towards the magic 25 in 5. I cannot describe how satisfying that is, after a life of lethargy, poor muscle tone and non-existent muscle memory.
This is why I will always skate as Sonia Boom. Sonia can do these things, and will do so much more. Sonia has even started leaking into my working life. If a student is playing up, Sonia has been known to fly in to the rescue. If I find myself in trouble with others, Sonia can step in.
Sonia is not bothered by her misfiring thyroid, or by what others thought of Rachel all those years ago.
Rachel + MRD = Sonia. Go Sonia!
