I Wrestled In High School, But I was Not A Wrestler

I Wrestled In High School, But I was Not A Wrestler

 Part I: Making Weight

 

In high school, I wrestled.  I was on the team, I wrestled, but I wasn’t a wrestler.  I was on the team because the football coach was also the wrestling coach and he told me to be on the team.   I hated wrestling, but it did give me some good stories.

See: “Bridge Tommy Bridge”

http://joeh-crankyoldman.blogspot.com/2013/01/bridge-tommy-bridge.html

Not great stories, but good ones, and here is another.

As I said, I wrestled but I was not a wrestler.  Wrestlers are a different breed.  They are Spartans.  They live to train and work and sacrifice and win with all their heart and soul.  I did most of those things, but my heart was never in it.

In my junior year I wrestled on the JV team, not Varsity.  I weighed all of 174 pounds, but because we had a better 177 pound wrestler than I and we had no heavy weight, I often wrestled at the heavy weight class.

The day before one match, the coach came up to me and told me to lose seven pounds, “I want you to wrestle 167 varsity tomorrow, Earle Vigne is sick.”

I practiced that day with extra sweats to shed water and make weight.  I worked extra after practice.  At home I skipped dinner.  Some water, a carrot and some celery was dinner.  The next morning I had orange juice for breakfast and skipped lunch.  Instead of a study hall, I hit the gym for an hour before we had to weigh in for that afternoons match.  I sweated some more, and spit in a towel till I could spit no more.  I weighed in at exactly 167 pounds.  I lost seven pounds, mostly water, in one day!  That kind of weight loss was not unusual in the sport.  Some wrestlers did it for every match.  I wrestled, I was not a wrestler.

I made weight, but I had no strength.  Weak and wrestling for Varsity for the first time, I figured I would lose.  My job was to not get pinned and thus save the team a couple of points.

Twenty minutes before the match the coach came up to me.  “Vigne is feeling better; you’re back to JV…heavyweight."

Damn, I lost seven pounds, was weak as hell, and now I had to wrestle heavy weight!

When a match begins, each team marches in and takes a seat in the order of their weight class.  You can look across the mat and see who your opponent is.  My opponent was a brick.  Six foot 225 to my five-ten 170.  He was a tiny head, with two tree stump legs all attached to a chest…a giant barrel chest…the biggest chest I’d ever seen.  The coach came down the line to my chair and with a big smile said, “See your man?  Good luck!”  He laughed and went back to the varsity bench.

Tomorrow Part II: The Chest

I KNOW

I KNOW

Mrs. Cranky says “I know” a lot.  It has many meanings all depending on the inflection of her voice, the emphasis on the “I” or the “know,” the stretching out of the “I” to “IIIYYY” or the “know” to “k n o w.”  The phrase takes on different meanings based on eyebrow movement or head shaking.

When Mrs. Cranky says, “I know,” it might means:

I do know that, Yes I know, Of course I know, That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Stop telling me that, I don’t want to know, Everyone knows that, I know but you don’t, Duh, or who cares.

There are many words or phrases that carry multiple meanings based on inflections and or facial expressions.  It is the inability to show inflections or facial expressions on today’s communication methods of Facebook, Twitter, email or texting that gets many people in trouble.  Their words are often misinterpreted.  The use of emoticons helps, but they are often annoying and still misinterpreted.

If we sometimes get in trouble because of the difficulty of expressing ourselves in the new communication media, just imagine the African Namibia tribe who speak with different clicking sounds, trying to tweet a message.

Click @Clack #clackclick “Click click clack tock”

Clack @Click “CLICK CLACK!”

Click @Clack “Click clickclickclick”

Clack @Click “CLACK TOCK!”

Click @Clack “Clack?”

Clack @Click “CLACK CLOK”

Click @Clack “Clickclickclick….CLACK!”

Clack @ Click “CLACK?”

Click @Clack “Clickclack!”

Clack @Click “Cluck Clu!”

I KNOW!!

HOMO SAPIEN –A REMARKABLE SPECIES - a cranky re-run

HOMO SAPIEN –A REMARKABLE SPECIES
This re-run from May 2012

Sharks can smell a drop of blood from a mile away. Dogs can hear sounds that humans cannot. Many animals can see at night as if it were day. Bats can’t see at all yet they can navigate and catch insects with their built in radar.

Naturalists constantly point out these remarkable animal feats as if humans were inferior to these creatures. True, we cannot compete with the rest of the animal world in terms of strength, speed, sense of taste, smell, sight and hearing, but some homo sapiens do have talents which other creatures could never master.

Is there any other creature on God’s green earth that could tie an apron behind their back while speaking on a cell phone tucked under their chin? The Weaver bird is able to construct a complicated nest out of twigs and reeds. Could a Weaver bird take two sticks and a ball of yarn and make a sweater while watching “Toddlers in Tiaras?”

Last Saturday on a bus I witnessed a skill which I have seen before, but for the first time realized how remarkable this ability, common to many female Homo sapiens really was. As I watched, I could hear the voice of Oprah narrating from “Life” in my head.

“The fourteen year old female of the species is troubled by her hair which has grown beyond shoulder length. It gets in her eyes and face and irritates her. Without stopping her constant and incessant communication with a companion, she performs the most remarkable feat. Taking her hands and without looking, she reaches behind her back and she separates her locks into three segments. Incredibly, as our camera captures the action, she begins to weave the segments in and out into a locking pattern resulting in one long thick rope-like structure of hair which no longer bothers her eyes or face. The female does all this in a matter of seconds. This blind weaving skill is remarkable enough but to keep the weave from unfurling she takes a small elastic band and folds it back and around the end of the weave at a speed which only our time action camera can capture. Other Homo sapiens ignore this young female’s action as apparently it is a skill not uncommon to the species.”

Is there another creature on this planet that can change the style of their plumes without looking while simultaneously communicating with another of the same species?

OK, maybe a peacock, or a turkey, or a chameleon, or….still it is a remarkable skill.