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Practicing What We Preach
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Wrestling With History Copyright 2006 Anthony Price
Someone much wiser than me said that education without application is entertainment. Sometimes I find myself remembering this as I watch my son catch a baseball or graduate from DARE or when he asks me to watch him conquer a fictional world on his N-64, or when we sit and talk. Maybe it’s easier when you parent only one kid.
I wasn’t an only child like my son is. I was a kid, just like most other kid, I guess. I was always doing stuff, exploring my domain and surroundings, sometimes getting into trouble, sometimes not, climbing trees. Stuff kids do, I guess. It wasn’t my idea to be the black sheep of the family; at least not at first. Maybe later on, but that is a different story. In this story, I was younger.
I liked playing sports when I was a kid. I liked watching my favorite pro football team on TV every Sunday with all the boys in the family gathered together. My seven sisters always found something else to do. Dad would quietly drink his beer and tomato juice, Tom would make popcorn, Brian would make Kool Aide, or what he thought was Kool Aide, Jim was older, so he would just wait, and Andy and I (the youngest two) would bring in the football and arrange the chairs so we could all watch at once. Andy was a year younger and loved the game even more than I did. He would actually sit on the football instead of a chair through the whole game! Well, the first half anyway; because at half time he and I would go outside and actually play the game. And in my imagination, my dad would stop drinking his beer and tomato juice and watch us from the picture window making the great catches in the yard.
Aside from the Sunday football games, I never saw my father. He worked the night shift, leaving home when we were at school, coming home when we were sleeping, and not waking in the morning until we were gone. He worked every Saturday, too. I saw other kids’ fathers lining the sidelines to cheer on the team, but never my own. One time Eric Burger asked me if I had a dad. No, my dad never came to the games. And my mom wouldn’t go anywhere without my dad driving. Heavens, she never left the house! But moms were not as important on the sidelines as dads were.
Every twelve-year-old has a best friend, and mine was John. He thought we could spend more time hanging out together if I tried wrestling instead of basketball that winter. I wasn’t all that good at basketball anyway, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. Right away I learned that it was a tough sport. I seemed forever to be six pounds too heavy. I found myself working long hours just to sweat. I found myself running everywhere, just to sweat off pounds.
Myron was five years older and a senior, but somehow we became friends anyway. I liked how he would give me a ride home in his car, keeping me off the bus. For some reason, I did not get along with that bus.
This way I could stay at wrestling practice longer, work out with the older high school guys, lose some dead weight and learn tricks about wrestling from these older guys. These were things I really needed.
It was after my third week of wrestling and coming home at 6:30 instead of 5:30 when I found myself standing in the kitchen having a heated discussion with my mother. My argument was that I needed to be late in order to improve my performance on the wrestling mat. Hers was that I should not be riding in a car with “an older boy.”
A few of my brothers and sisters were listening and sitting around the kitchen table, but instead of supporting me with their eyes, I saw the looks of, “I’m glad it’s you and not me.” I didn’t understand why. We disagreed often in my family, but the unwritten rules were first, stand for yourself against everyone; second, stand with siblings against mom and dad; third, stand with friends against mom and dad. I didn’t understand those looks.
I remember the conversation went on for maybe ten minutes and each minute was louder that the one before. I wasn’t sure (at twelve years old) if I would win, but I wasn’t interested in giving up. That is why I didn’t see my father come into the room. Well, he was never home anyway, so why would he be here this day?
My father heard the debate, but had ideas of his own. He started by asking, “So, you want to be a wrestler?” But I knew it was a rhetorical question because he never parted his teeth when he asked. Sort of like Clint Eastwood asking, “Do ya feel lucky, Punk?”
I didn’t have time to respond anyway, his hands where on me faster than cold on wet metal in Minnesota in January. Both hands with grips of steel grabbed my shirt at my chest. I felt my body going limp. We had a big kitchen and my feet didn’t hit the floor at all as I traveled the fifteen feet to the refrigerator. I don’t think I got hurt, since I had the refrigerator to break my fall. I crumpled to the floor at the foot of the fridge, noticing how the tile floor had yellowed. The fridge had moved about four inches.
My new wrestling career wasn’t over yet, however, since before I could determine how to clean the yellow tiles, I was airborne again. I was wondering if it was really me, or if I was having some kind of weird out of body experience. It must have been me, I thought, because I heard my mother scream, “stop Keith, you’re gonna kill him!” but it was too late to stop. When I did stop, I was crumpled on the floor in the very spot where it all began, this time noticing the cracks in the plaster. I didn’t wonder who would be the one to fix them or even how they should be fixed. I was only twelve. Twelve-year-olds don’t know how to fix plaster.
My father’s teeth didn’t part the next time he spoke, just like they didn’t when he spoke the first time. “You’re off the team.” Somehow, I think the discussion was over right about then. I had nothing more I wanted to say.
I turned in my uniform the next day. I never heard my mother say how she got the floor clean under the refrigerator, or how the wall was fixed or how she got the blood out of the white towels I used to clean myself. I never asked, she never told.
My son is eleven now. I often remember my life at his age when I look at him. My innocence was already lost. I was a cigarette smoker by the time I was my son’s age. He boasts that he’s the only one in the whole sixth grade who still believes in Santa Claus. I tell him I’m the only one at work who believes, too.
When I was his age, I smoked, drank, and experimented with drugs. When he’s twenty he may wish he had some of my experiences, but I’m sure, his are the better of the two. He tells me his classmates all think I’m the best chaperone on field trips. Could you get a better compliment? They still talk about the time in cub scouts when I was laughing so hard I accidentally hit the bull’s eye with a bow and arrow. They seem to enjoy my company.
Yesterday, I helped my son pull out one of his last baby teeth. We carefully put it under the pillow for the tooth fairy, which he believes will come in the night. And I will make sure he is right.
I learned a lot when I was a kid. And if I didn’t apply what I learned then, my memories would be nothing but entertainment. I owe my son and my father more than just entertainment.
My son can wrestle if he
wants, but how do I teach him not to ask if his classmates “even
have a dad?” And I’ll drive him home if he asks me. I’ll even go to
the games. Or are they matches?
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