I would like to set the record straight on a little matter involving sports. Wrestling – not ersatz, professional “wrestling,” but the kind practiced in high school, college, and the Olympics – is not erotic. Sure, there’s plenty of sweaty guys with hot bodies knotted into seemingly kinky positions (yeah, yeah, look at the picture), but if you’ve been in the sport, you know better.
A double root canal is a bigger turn on than wrestling. As is stamping invoices or watching C-SPAN with the sound off.
The math is simple: wrestling is the hardest sport out there, period. A single high school match is the aerobic equivalent of sprinting for six minutes. Your body is twisted and mangled in shapes for which it was not designed. You are thrown around, subjected to painful holds, your face mashed and hit; all of this is legal.
Training is hell on earth. One’s life is spent lifting weights, running windsprints until you’re sick and then some more, and wrestling in overheated rooms, your body drenched, your ears mashed into cauliflower. And the offseason is just more of the same.
This is a good time?
Then there’s cutting weight. I wrestled at 138 pounds in high school, even though I was closer to 145, the next class up, so I’d have to lose 5 to 7 pounds each week. I cannot describe how awful this was to a growing boy who loved to eat.
I joined the team after my freshman soccer coach, also the freshman wrestling coach, talked me into it. Wrestling is a great sport, but not necessarily fun, even if you are successful. There’s a tremendous amount of satisfaction when you win, but I can’t say I ever looked forward to a match. You don’t get the adrenaline rush of scoring a touchdown or hitting a home run.
(Please, I know many love to wrestle. They think it’s the best sport ever created. Otherwise they wouldn’t devote their lives to it. Just don’t tell me how you’d rather wrestle and lose than play basketball, or I’m an idiot, etc.; I know this already.)
Now, more than 20 years later, I’ll see NCAA or Olympic wrestling on television, or hear tales from my brother, a far superior grappler than I ever was, and I’ll think, “Why did I ever quit? I might have been good.”
Talk about delusional. Not only was I simply average, I never loved wrestling, a prerequisite if you want to take this sadomasochistic sport seriously. As a 15-year-old, it wasn’t a good time. I quit after a couple of years, preferring a full buffet and less pain, and never looked back, until now.
Because wrestling is a noble endeavor of sacrifice and toil, I forget just how hard it is. I like telling people I wrestled in high school (for two whole years! wow!), as it makes me look like a tough guy. Wife sometimes mentions my wrestling past to others, which is cool.
Having returned from the AWP convention, I’ve also been having fits of selective memory about writing. I wonder why my work didn’t fly when I was in my 20s and early 30s. I think: Damn, if I’d just not been so headstrong and actually listened to teachers, if I’d taken writing seriously instead of treating it as a lark, I wouldn’t have wasted all those years writing full-fledged drek.
Instead of writing stories that were a series of jokes strung around a silly plot, lacking whole characters or evocative prose, maybe I would have actually published stuff earlier.
Here’s where the selective memory comes in. The above version of events leaves out several important details. My 20s were largely a lost decade, spent grappling (ha) with bad relationships, bad geography, and a bad job. I was profoundly unhappy, which manifest itself in my writing, bitter and cerebral and bad.
Nor did I get the “wacky” thing out of my system until I was in my mid-30s. I finally got the idea that it was fine to have normal people doing normal things and normal emotions, and my writing improved appreciably. (Having Wife around didn’t hurt, either).
But I’d like to think that things weren’t as bad as they seemed, and I could have been a great writer at 25. Selective memory plays its rotten tricks.
All I have to do is read some of my early work to realize this. Too bad I’ve burned it.
I haven’t seen RPW televised yet, but I think they should not try to be a superstar league a la NBA. It should continue to cater to fans who have the patience to follow control-and-pin wrestling. (I don’t think they have pins, do they?) It’ll be enough if they can capture a loyal audience of real fans. Like the NHL, before it expanded south and west.
I don’t think the teams are a bad idea, though I doubt they’ll generate the excitment the league is hoping for. And the names, you’re right, are complete misses. They’re like the names of indoor soccer teams, trying too hard to be edgy, in-your-face. They should have considered those overlong, overspecific names of late 19th c. sports teams, such as the New York Metropolitan Wrestling Club, The Statewide Pennsylvanian Wrestling Fellows. They’re somehow morally elevating, purposeful.
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Piece of crap…how can you come in over weight by 3 pounds the day of a match. Now go get a trashbag on and throw your sweats over it and hit the track for a couple of miles. Then turn on all the showers and steam off another pound. Make sure and spit while you run because that can take a quarter of a pound off. Then I want you to wrestle until weigh-in with a heavier to make the weight. Ahh…such great memories.
Piece of crap…how can you come in over weight by 3 pounds the day of a match. Now go get a trashbag on and throw your sweats over it and hit the track for a couple of miles. Then turn on all the showers and steam off another pound. Make sure and spit while you run because that can take a quarter of a pound off. Then I want you to wrestle until weigh-in with a heavier to make the weight. Ahh…such great memories.
Piece of crap…how can you come in over weight by 3 pounds the day of a match. Now go get a trashbag on and throw your sweats over it and hit the track for a couple of miles. Then turn on all the showers and steam off another pound. Make sure and spit while you run because that can take a quarter of a pound off. Then I want you to wrestle until weigh-in with a heavier to make the weight. Ahh…such great memories.
I relate strongly to this post. *Hugs* Different circumstances prevented me from following my dream to attend art school. Although many say, one should not regret, I feel it’s healthy to release those feelings and then move forward as you (and I and others) have done.
You and others give me inspiration that it’s never too late. Others have said that to me, too. I shouldn’t be surprised when that is said or written to me, but I still am…
It is SO very hard, like pulling superglued teeth often, not to think to back when and wonder “what if?”, but we must think of now and move forward. Time doesn’t allow us that freedom to travel backwards. No amount of pondering will let us slip into the “Twilight Zone.” Selective memory can be a comforting mirage…
Many strangers, too, have been incredibly encouraging to me about what I have created since my re-entry into the public arena. Those of us who were stymied along the way, for one reason or another, greatly appreciate and need the TLC of varied supportive groups. At least I do.
My husband will smile and say he has “known and said all along since our 20′s”, as I have branced out into several different artistic areas that I used to keep private. (Photography and jewelry making besides fine art painting). He, my daughters, and a few very close friends who did know me “when”, all have been cheerleading rocks. He and the close friends have patiently waited a long time, but for each and every rejection or acceptance I hear their encourging voices and imagine their smiling eyes.
I relate strongly to this post. *Hugs* Different circumstances prevented me from following my dream to attend art school. Although many say, one should not regret, I feel it’s healthy to release those feelings and then move forward as you (and I and others) have done.
You and others give me inspiration that it’s never too late. Others have said that to me, too. I shouldn’t be surprised when that is said or written to me, but I still am…
It is SO very hard, like pulling superglued teeth often, not to think to back when and wonder “what if?”, but we must think of now and move forward. Time doesn’t allow us that freedom to travel backwards. No amount of pondering will let us slip into the “Twilight Zone.” Selective memory can be a comforting mirage…
Many strangers, too, have been incredibly encouraging to me about what I have created since my re-entry into the public arena. Those of us who were stymied along the way, for one reason or another, greatly appreciate and need the TLC of varied supportive groups. At least I do.
My husband will smile and say he has “known and said all along since our 20′s”, as I have branced out into several different artistic areas that I used to keep private. (Photography and jewelry making besides fine art painting). He, my daughters, and a few very close friends who did know me “when”, all have been cheerleading rocks. He and the close friends have patiently waited a long time, but for each and every rejection or acceptance I hear their encourging voices and imagine their smiling eyes.
I relate strongly to this post. *Hugs* Different circumstances prevented me from following my dream to attend art school. Although many say, one should not regret, I feel it’s healthy to release those feelings and then move forward as you (and I and others) have done.
You and others give me inspiration that it’s never too late. Others have said that to me, too. I shouldn’t be surprised when that is said or written to me, but I still am…
It is SO very hard, like pulling superglued teeth often, not to think to back when and wonder “what if?”, but we must think of now and move forward. Time doesn’t allow us that freedom to travel backwards. No amount of pondering will let us slip into the “Twilight Zone.” Selective memory can be a comforting mirage…
Many strangers, too, have been incredibly encouraging to me about what I have created since my re-entry into the public arena. Those of us who were stymied along the way, for one reason or another, greatly appreciate and need the TLC of varied supportive groups. At least I do.
My husband will smile and say he has “known and said all along since our 20′s”, as I have branced out into several different artistic areas that I used to keep private. (Photography and jewelry making besides fine art painting). He, my daughters, and a few very close friends who did know me “when”, all have been cheerleading rocks. He and the close friends have patiently waited a long time, but for each and every rejection or acceptance I hear their encourging voices and imagine their smiling eyes.