me and roller derby

yes I know you watched roller derby back in the 1970's.  everyone did. It's not the same as it was then, though.  The description we tend to use is this:

Professional wrestling started real and turned fake.  Roller derby started fake and turned real.

There are ten women on the track at a time - five from each team.  Eight of them bunch up at one line (that's the pack.  People in the pack are blockers).  The other two line up 20 feet behind.  They are the jammers, with stars on their helmets.  They score the points.

At the first whistle blow, the pack starts moving counterclockwise around the track.  At the second whistle blow, the jammers start.  The jammers have to catch up to the pack and get through it.  The blockers help their jammers through the pack, and stop the other team's jammer from getting through.  (It's one of the few sports, if not the only sport, where you play offense and defense at the same time.)  

So the jammer gets through the pack, yay!  Then, they have to sprint around and go through the pack again.  It's on this time through that she can score points - one point for each player on the opposite team she passes.

Each "play" is called a jam.  Jams go on for two minutes, unless they are called off early by the lead jammer.  Lead jammer is the skater who can get through the pack first without getting any minor penalties (elbows, going out of bounds, things like that).  If both jammers get penalties while going through the pack, there is no lead jammer and the jam goes on for the full two minutes.

That's basically the rules in a nutshell.   (There's all sorts of intricacies I haven't mentioned - the pivot, for example, who has a stripe on her helmet - but those can be for a later time.)

99.9% of the time, I am a blocker.  I have jammed three times in bouts, when we were either so far behind we'd never catch up, or so far ahead the other team would never catch up.  The first time, I got lead jammer (I believe at which point I screamed "OH MY GOD YOU'RE KIDDING!"), scored two points and called off the jam before the other woman could score any (this is why it's good to call off the jam).  The second time there was no lead jammer, I scored four points and the other jammer scored, I believe, eleventy billion points (because there was no lead jammer, it went on for the full two minutes and I actually thought my heart was going to explode afterwards).  The third time I got lead jam, scored four points and called it off before the other jammer could score any.  (This third time was at our final home bout of the season, and let me tell you, it was so fucking awesome to hear everyone cheering me on and screaming and all that.)

So yeah, that's about it.