I Need Gift Shoes and Fighting Underwear
My
parents had been most reluctant to have me participate in sports it
was only by my persistent and focused effort that I had played city
league and church basketball. I played soccer for one season when I
was 10 and then my dad said I couldn't do that anymore because it
occupied too much of my mom's time to drive me around to all the
practices and games. This was not strictly true because the practices
and games were at my school and I walked to almost all of them. He
didn't let me try out for or play foot ball because he said it was
too much of a drain on the family's time. I made the soccer team my
Junior year and my dad told me I had to choose to play on the soccer
team or to have a car because if I didn't work with him I wouldn't
get to use the car. I chose car. When it came to wrestling I decided
I was just going to do it and drove myself and paid for stuff myself.
I didn't want to spend money on shoes and I didn't know where to buy
them any way so I had been practicing in socks for a couple of weeks
when a kid, as I mentioned before, gave me a pair of his old ones. I
had to pay for my own physical and I borrowed an old pair of fighting
underwear from the wrestling supply room. There is a strange protocol
surrounding fighting underwear that I didn't know. You don't wear it
for practice and you keep it covered up even when you are about to
wrestle and then at the last second like you are ashamed of it you
whip off your sweats and then wrestle and after you lose you put them
back on just as quickly. To wrestle you must also have a pair of ear
goggles which I was gifted as well. With my makeshift gear I was
ready to roll and roll I did.