Trucks Hauling

Any day that the weather would allow we would head up the canyon to go rock climbing and hanging out. Every day we drove up there we would drive passed a sign that said “CAUTION TRUCKS HAULING”. The words were written on the top half of a yellow diamond traffic sign and left the bottom third of the space available for modification to finish the sign and  the thought. If you are a fellow smart-a you may have already finished the sentence. I was compelled to clarify that what trucks were hauling which would require so much caution was 'ASS''. I did it with a black Sharpie marker and tried to make it look like the same font. It was mildly clever and didn't justify a retelling on the weight of that joke alone but wait, there is more. Just a few days after I had improved the sign I was riding up the canyon with my girlfriend's family for a picnic and when we passed the altered sign my girlfriend's  mom gasped and told her husband to stop so that she could look at the sign. She had initially thought that the 'ASS' had been an official part of the sign and was ready to call the powers that be to offer an unsolicited piece of her mind. Upon closer inspection she realized that she was looking at a clever piece of smartassery and then started complaining loudly about what kind of disrespectful and crass individual would do such a thing. I was at once nervous that I would be found out but at the same time I was proud that at least with this lady my joke was getting some recognition. The sign stayed up until  spring and every time I would pass I considered my girlfriend's mom's reaction and it warmed my heart.

My Mom Thinks Those Dudes are Pussies

I told you that my mom was into some tough stuff because I need to tell you that she she only liked her men to behave in one of two ways – manly and manlier. She hated when dudes were all wussy, and effeminate and stuff and would make the I-smell-something-foul face and shiver in disgust if she observed that sort of thing in the wild. One day my third-wave-sex-negative-feminist-proto-girlfriend was over at my house for a little hanging out after some rock climbing and my mom was ranting about some guys who had done something wussy. She was saying what they had done and then she described them as 'pussies'. My girlfriend was aghast, and never the shrinking violet, she expressed her displeasure loudly and directly to my mom about her choice of words and her unreformed view of gender roles. She told my mom she couldn't believe that she had used the word 'pussies' because it was a dirty word that was meant to degrade somebody by comparing them to female genitals. My mom looked chastened and ashamed as she apologized. I saw the opening for a joke, and as was my fatal flaw, I went in for the ill advised maneuver. I said that it was unfortunate that my mom had used such a horrible word, but in her defense those dudes were total pussies. My girlfriend was absolutely not amused and yelled at me and stormed out as I tried to apologize and smooth things over. She was not having it and she was in a huff for a couple days. I was still proud of my joke and it eventually worked out okay so everyone is a winner; except for those two pussy dudes, they're still pussies, which is its own private prison. 

My Mom is a Closet Bad-A

My mom is a lot more hardcore than you think. She does look like your typical off-the-shelf mild-mannered professional mother and nurse. That is just the facade she keeps up to keep from freaking out the squares. In high school she looked like Marsha Brady but she was into the really dark rock of the day.

Like this but really into Black Sabath

When I was in high school to scratch her go-faster-kill-kill my mom used to rent out a lazer tag arena late at night and invite all of our friends to come have a little cathartic shoot 'em up while listening to her favorite band – Rage Against The Machine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4smim2MNvF8
One time she got so fired up on the pure world hating hate of the music that she was tricked in her own mind into thinking that she was a superstar ninja killer. A ninja killer is constrained by their nature to kick-butt which means doing flips over stuff. She was helpless to resist it so when she saw the opportunity she took it. In a moment of pure white hot passion she tried to do a front handspring flip over a waist high barrier. Sometime between her ill advised launch and where the mother hits the road physics kicked in to remind her of the physical limitations of a middle aged stay at home gardener.  Physics is a jerk. The upshot was that she over-rotated and landed on her knee and face. She played a little more until the adrenaline lost the battle with the pain and then she was done for a couple of weeks reduced from lazer warrior princess to hobbled house Frau. She kept the reason for her convalescence secret to her heart and told people that she had fallen in some mundane way because she was too embarrassed about being one hundred percent carved out of repressed rage and teeming hate.

Matt is Not Funny and Gets Dominoed

If anything my younger brother Matt is a more thorough and dedicated joker than I myself am. Most of the time that means that when we were together it was a back and forth comedy chain reaction of increasing hijinks and hilarity. That was unless Matt had decided to point his not insubstantial comedy mentus at the girl I was trying to date. Then I was stuck trying to either not laugh  at what was obviously funny or trying to defend her idiosyncratic behavior so that she would still be predisposed for a little cuddle action later on. Anyone who has ever endured a mixing of friend scenario knows exactly what I am talking about. You like them all for different reasons but somehow it slips your mind that they have incompatible tastes, religion, politics, or whatever and you spend the night trying to present mutually inoffensive topics of conversation. It is gut wrenching fun for no one. This time my brother and his girlfriend had been invited over to my girlfriend's house for a game of dominoes and I thought that would be fine because I forgot that my girlfriend and brother both tend to speak their minds and then defend their positions. It started out okay for a little while until she said something and he made fun of her and then she got defensive and he made more fun of her and then his date and I got uncomfortable and were looking around considering our futility, in just a few minutes our evening had devolved into a girl shouting and boy laughing and mocking party and it ended abruptly when my girlfriend decided the best way to wrap this conflict up was to grab a handful of dominoes and throw them with all her force the three feet across the table at my brother's still laughing face. He called he some sort of name and said he was leaving, he did. I tried to run a little anger containment and damage control after he was gone and let her fume for a bit about how my brother was right out of line. I didn't think he was the one who crossed the line but he also didn't have the potential for sweet kisses and completely in line with my exemplary moral fiber I told her what she wanted to hear.  I went home later and told my brother what he wanted to hear and they got along from there on out by not talking to each other too much and by a twist of fate are the ones still in contact all these years later.

GIRLS [WASH DISHES]

My almost girlfriend was getting big into girl power and the commercial wave of feminism lite that was currently in vogue. There were T-shirts, wallets and stickers for some off-the-shelf strongly held political belief. One sticker that was making the rounds was a white font on a black background rectangle that simply stated “GIRLS RULE”. I am pretty sure that having that sticker and the vapid banality of it single handedly set back women's rights by twenty years. As is the case with everything in my life I thought that a well placed joke would help everyone realize the essential absurdity of our existential crises and laugh at the gallows humor which is the human experience. This is not the first or last time I would make that mistake. I got some sticker paper and in drafting class wrote “WASH DISHES” in the same size, style and font in  a manner that would, at first glance, appear to be what the original sticker actually said. I printed out a whole sheet of them and cut them out carefully and during the next class period, while the school was otherwise occupied, I covered over all of the “RULE”s I could find with “WASH DISHES”.  Funny stuff right there, funny stuff. Well, I went to class and when I got out of the last class of the day I was going to tell some people about my comedy coup but before I could I noticed that there were a couple of really pissed people talking about death and dismemberment for somebody. It turns out that there were some of the Girl Power girls who had seen the stickers and unlike most feminist they didn't have a sense of humor about their politics. I was deciding to lay low for a bit and hold off on taking credit when an announcement came over the PA system that they were looking for anyone who had information about some vandalism to bumper stickers in the parking lot. That made up my mind and I met up with my livid girlfriend who was riled up about hillbilly misogyny and the kind of jerk who thought saying women should be in the kitchen, I pointed out it was a kind of funny send up of the sticker like that legged fish Darwin take on the christen fish bumper sticker.  She was not to be mollified and I decided to keep myself to myself and I never told her it was me who did it . Not ever. In fact I think the only person I ever told was my best friend Cole who did think it was funny.

Nights Spent not Making Out

Over the holiday breaks we were getting to be exclusive and I spent almost every night at her house hanging out, listening to music, watching movies and then arguing with her brothers about which was a better movie. Actually there was lots of different arguments about lots of things because that was the way their family was. I am not an arguer, I like to present data and then consider the best solution to the problem and on matters of opinion I don't even engage other than to mock their taste, even if I share that taste just for the sake of the joke. That made it a little uncomfortable some times when I wouldn't back my girlfriend's play or I would make a joke at her expense. When everyone else would go to bed we would sit and talk in the dark and sometimes cuddle but whenever I tried to turn the corner into a little kissey face I was shut down the mood would cool noticeably and rapidly and it would be time to go home. I would head home a little confused, a little sad, and a little angry. A cluster of emotions I don't feel together very often anymore probably just because I am no longer overflowing with the chemicals that nature sees fit to inflict on minds supremely ill equipped to deal with. We were definitely going out at this point but I was unsure what the holdup was on the smooching. I wasn't overly disappoint though she was really pretty, very fun and cool so there was that.

Writing a Report

My situation at this time could best be expressed in the words of the incomparable Mitch Hedberg, “I don't have a girlfriend, I just know a girl who would get really mad if she heard me say that.” I don't remember exactly where in our time-line of becoming a couple this story comes but it was the first time that my crush made any sort of overt sign of physical affection so it anchored in my mind. She was in an English class which was requiring a five page research paper on a controversial topic of her choice. I don't remember the topic but it was probably one of those favorites of the mid-nineties. The key thing is that she was having trouble with the bulk of her assignment she just needed some filler and I can fill, and fill, and fill,(twenty-five words and almost two lines by the time I will finish explaining how much filler I can generate.) We were sitting up in the computer loft in my parents bedroom she dictating and I tating or what ever you call my part of it. Most of the time she had been leaning in close and making what could have almost been incidental contact. I was hoping she was coming onto me but I was not entirely sure yet so I was playing it cool. I was honestly playing it petrified because she was such a passionate and fiery soul that I didn't want to read it wrong and have her destroy me and then be gone forever. Another hour into writing her paper for her and she made a distinctly and definitely flirty move by putting her finger in a hole in the lower thigh of my jeans and tracing a pattern on my leg while I pretended to write. She flirted more explicitly and I finished what I was sure was grade A material, hopefully literally. It was not she got a B-, and you will never guess why, well you might if you have read my writing before, there were lots of spelling errors. I am, whey I yam. I was just ecstatic that my long-term project to turn the corner in to physical romance  with this girl was entering the end game.

Oh, it's Christmas

My girlfriend's mom was quite a character. She was at turns feisty and confrontational while at other times she was just feisty. Her main focus in life was making absolutely sure her rights ans her perceived rights and those of her circle were protected after she was done with that full time job she was pretty mellow. One time while we were sitting in her living room talking and she happened to glance out her front window and saw that the neighbor had spent all day putting up a fairly elaborate Christmas display. She mumbled something and then said, 'Oh, it's Christmas.' she turned around and fished a dangling plug out from behind the couch and plugged it into an extension cord illuminating a single strand of blue lights that didn't quite make it all the way around the front window. I have never seen something more hilariously bad-a in my entire life. She was the first person I met that just didn't care and it was an amazing revelation. Every time I see someone ostentatiously outdoing the Jones' with some sort of holiday display I pay homepage to the OG of middle class ennui and mutter, “Oh, it's Christmas.”

I am Conscripted to Make a Christmas Quilt

With Christmas coming up it was time for grand gestures and romantic endgame. I was getting the feeling that I was getting close on this deal because I was spending three or four nights a week with my long project girl and a lot of that time was spent cuddling and sitting close but there was no movement on the kissing front yet. I cannot remember what I got her for Christmas that year but she went all out and was making me a denim scrap quilt. That kind of quilt is made by cutting out six inch squares of old jeans and then taking the two hundred or so pieces and sewing them together into a blanket and then backing it with another blanket and then tying them both together. It is an immense amount of work and may have been the product of overambitious inexperience.

This is not the one but it looked just like this. 

What I know for sure is what started as a solo project and a secret surprise developed into a full blown cluster mess. After a week or so it went from a secret to an open secret. In ten days it went from her making it for me to me helping and in three weeks there was a whole team on the job including her friends and mother. When it was finished it was a magnificent and warm thing that would last for years. Maybe it has lasted for years, I don't know because a few years later when she was collecting her belongings when she was getting ready to marry someone else it went missing and I heard she had taken it back. Probably a good idea I didn't really deserve its stewardship anymore.

Dress up Monkey Wears Overalls

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas that year I started hanging out with the girl I was madly in love with every day or close to it. My friend was also spending lots of time with her many days taking her to school or giving her a ride back home. Several times he would tell me that she had no interest romantically in me based on things she had told him in their private conversations. Other times she would tell me that my friend had been telling her all sorts of scandalous things about me. I didn't begrudge him a single thing, it didn't even make me mad, it was all in the spirit of competition and all is fair in love and war. He was leading off with a few romantic gestures that had me feeling left out so I made the exact same romantic gestures. It was getting a little weird at times but we were still all friends and went and did lots of things together. She went with us clothes shopping one day and at the time the hipping and hopping community had started advocating the practice of non-farmers wearing denim overalls in the sassy and swashbuckling style of leaving one of the built-in suspender things off to flap in the breeze. This was probably not a look I would have gone with if I was alone in the wilds of fashion all alone but my guide who I was very interested in pleasing said it was super cute. I left my dignity and self respect at the door and started being her dress up monkey trying on various styles and sizes until she found the pair that pleased her and then she demanded I buy them and wear them. My friend openly mocked my newly acquired urban-lite styling and my almost complete lack of self respect. True enough, but I was willing to debase myself for the opportunity to become her full time lapdog if there was any chance whatsoever that included some making out or 'macking' in the appropriated parlance of the day. I dressed like she wanted me to and took on the girl-power politics she espoused and that was my plan to win her over. My friend was unwilling to compromise his basic sense of identify to follow me down that particular rabbit hole and we started to move into end game. The lesson here is that I was spineless and possessing of almost infinitely flexible morality to get what I wanted. It's what champions are made of.

Try a Hot Tub Hook Up

Things we not moving forward with the girl I wanted very fast and maybe that is why I wanted her so bad. That and she was really hot. My overriding motivation at that point in my life was still my boiling churning mind control chemicals of puberty and so I was looking for a girl a little more available and less of a long-term project. Does that make me a shallow and self-centered pig, yes it does, and if you had not sussed that out by reading in this far in that I have a defective personality than I am not telling these stories right. My plan was simple I would invite a couple of people over to my house , set up a tv and watch a movie in the hot tub and then make my move. The only problem was that the stupid plan was that one of the kids who was coming over was a huge U2 fan and weaseled their lame concert video into the play list and it was two hours of overheating in the water suffering through 'Rattle and Hum'. The best part was that I knew in my heart that it would soon be over. When it was over I got changed and we all loaded into my truck to take everyone home. I once again used my far from original 'take the girl home last' method of creeping. When all the boys and girls were dropped off  I had about a two mile drive to make my move. My needy and pathetic over eagerness is cringe-worthy to this day. I asked her some small talk questions and then when we were about to turn down the road to her house I made my move. I pulled the truck over to the side of the road and put my hand on her knee and asked her if she was interested in hooking up. I need to let you know that this is a girl that I dated before in junior high and that since that time this was the second time we had even talked and she had just broken up with a long time boyfriend and was not in a good place emotionally. She declined and asked me to just take her home. I did and then swore at myself and called myself names the whole way home because I hated how stupid, creepy and lame I was. I wanted to call her up and apologize but back in the days of only having one family phone there was a good chance a call to her house would be highly disruptive. I settled for writing her a note an delivering it to her house the next morning and then I didn't talk to her again until the summer after graduation when I saved her from an abusive relationship. I included that detail ahead of schedule to provide me with some modicum of redemption after all.

I Talk A Girl Down From a Dirt Bag

During this that I was trying to work out a way to seal the deal with my reluctant love interest I happened to run into an old flame at church one day. She was house and babysitting for a lady who lived by me and so we spent the time we were supposed to be learning about Jesus to talk and catch up. She told me she had been having a hard time dealing with some personal problems and a bad boyfriend. I listened and when church was over I walked with her back to the house she was staying at and then asked her to go for a hike and picnic with me. She seemed really excited to do that and we went out that afternoon and had a great time. She told me that this was the first time she had been happy and stress free in a very long time. I told her she just needed to dump that dirt-bag boyfriend of hers and she could move on and be happier all the time. We went home and she thanked me for a nice time and then latter that afternoon called to tell me that she had taken my advice and dumped her deadbeat boyfriend. I congratulated her and told her if she needed anything I was always there for her. I burned that bridge shortly.

Tori Amos in a High School

The girl that I had my sights on was a huge Tori Amos fan and my sister had introduced me to her sultry girl-and-a-piano styling when I was a junior so I was a fan as well. When I found out she was coming t0 town, not to our town but to a town we could conceivable get to, I asked if she wanted to go. She was dating someone at the time so I made sure she knew that other people were coming so it didn't seem like a date per se, but I wanted her to think of it as a date in the sense that she was welcome to kiss me at any and every point of the evening. One of my friends, one of hers and her friend's cousin who happened to have been my neighbor for a vary long time all got tickets and the day of I drove everyone up to the big city near us to make a day of doing stuff that we could not do in our little home town. That ended up being shopping at a mall where one of the girls bought a jacket and then had buyers remorse and later took it back. It was a real treat and a pleasure to get to see how people lived in big cities. I was so nervous about loosing my way and not getting to the concert, which was being held in a high school auditorium, on time that I stopped at a few green lights and ran at least one red. We got to the high school and it seemed we were a lot less goth and lesbian than the typical Tori Amos fan and we looked a little out of place. We found our seats which I traded with my friend to get to sit next to the girl of my desire even though that meant that he had to sit in the worst seat on the row. That is called taking one for the team friend. The setting was very intimate and she had a magnetic stage presence it is to this day one of the most intense concerts I have ever been to including two more Tori Amos concerts. She has an A Capella song called Me and A Gun about her being raped when she was younger and during the number they cleared off the stage except for a bar stool and they lit her with one red light while she sung a powerfully tortured version of the song that had every single person in the place silent and on the edge of our seats.

The whole time the concert was going on I was trying to decide weather or not to try and make a move for a hand hold or something but I didn't ever try to make that leap. It was strange because I had no trouble whatsoever just going for it with almost any other girl but I was conflicted over my great desire for her and my great desire not to mess it up. We bought some shirts and rode home recounting how good each and every song was. I organized the drop off to put my crushes house last and when we got there I talked with her in the car for a very long time and said that I had I really good time and I would like to go out with her more. She said she was dating someone and I was probably not her type anyway that hurt my feel-bads so I didn't ask what she meant. It turned out she was talking about something my friend had told her about me when they were hanging out. It happened to be true but painted me in a bad light, which I think was his point. 

Running Static and Having Static Run

The girl I really wanted to date was a girl from my hometown that was pretty good looking and pretty fierce. She was highly opinionated and was not remotely afraid of letting all and sundry know what she thought and exactly how much she thought it. I had kind of had a thing for her on and off since the third grade. For most of that time I was well out of her league but there was a time my Junior year when we were hanging out with some mutual friends that some second level flirtation went on that made me think I may be able to finally make a move. We had driven up to the top of a local mountain and snuck into the radio relay tower and climbed up to the top and on the way home she and I sat together in the back seat. We were on a very curvy road and I was exaggerating the g-force around the turns to squish into her and the others in the back seat. She was playing along and was squishing back when the forces demanded it from her side. When we got down to a level road I leaned against her and she played with my hair which was pretty long at the time. Whoops! I wrote that last part wrong it should read, '. . . pretty and long.' Double conditioning was the key. At the time I was after another girl and she was kind of dating someone so nothing came of it but the experience gave me ideas. Now that we were a ways into our senior year she had been dating a kid that I would call a bit of a steaming pile of human garbage. Well, I would call him that if I was not as considerate of others as I am. I had been jealous of him like I was of all of those rish kids who didn't appreciate the luxuries I could only dream of. We were in a group of mutual friends that gave me opportunity to run a little anti-boyfriend static and I did anytime and every time I could. About Christmas break she had broken up with him because he was a turd and he started telling everyone that he had broken up with her because she was 'tight' – slang in our high school for a girl unwilling to put out sexually. I swooped in to take the chance to woo her but my best friend then and still my best friend to this day had the same idea. The chess game of trying to gain her favor while passive-aggressively trying to sabotage each other had begun.

My Brother Bails Me Out

After her friend yelled at me in the hall I capitulated and returned my overzealous admirers phone calls. Then she was back to the being outside all of my classes schedule. I had another dance, boys choice coming up and I didn't want to take her but I also didn't want to get murdered in my sleep or in a more ignominious manner. I was trying to figure out a slick and easy way out and I couldn't so I came up with the plan I teased at the end of the last post. I asked my little brother to ask her out to the dance. My plan was that if he asked her she would have to go with him and I could legitimately not ask her and then it would give me a way out of her overbearing affections and my brother could make a clean escape as well. I don't really know what my brother's motivation was besides helping me out because I don't think that he had any interest in her besides that. He went all out and made her a volleyball sized paper mache pig-like alien and had the invitation to the dance on a strip of paper that fed out of it's mouth. The day after he asked her I was in English class in the morning she came to the door and asked to talk to me. The teacher gave me permission to leave and we went and sat on a bench that was set into the wall of a back hall and she worked up the courage to tell me what was on her mind. She was fervent and a little more intense than the situation merited when she explained her problem. She told me that my brother had asked her out to the dance. Did he now? She told me that she did want to go with him but she wanted to make sure I was okay with it because we kind-of had something going and she didn't want to hurt my feelings. I played it cool as I saw the end of this ordeal clearly in my sights. I took a deep breath to indicated my level of contemplation and concern and I let it out slowly and then told her I thought she should go with him and have a fun time. She said she was glad that I was okay with it and she gave me a hug and left down the hall. I felt like I had been filled up with freedom and happiness from my toes to my head. I didn't celebrate until she was around the corner but then I gave it a silent fist pumping 'Yes!' and then I went back to class much more relieved and happy than I should have been I guess. My brother took her to the dance and I took someone else and I may have asked him how it went but I don't remember what he told me. The important thing as far as I was concerned was that she stopped hanging out waiting for each of my classes to end and she stopped calling and her crazy friend didn't yell at me again. That is not true, she did yell at me again one time 5 years later when her boyfriend’s cousin was my roommate and she came over for a visit and we got into it a little.

I Dance My Way Into a Corner

As I have mentioned before it was considered insufficient in our school to just go out to dinner and the dance we had to have a whole day-long production. On this particular day the plan was to go up to the local metropolis to spend the day at the planetarium and then go to the dance. The group that my borderline stalker friend has us going with was not a group that I was familiar with except for an effeminate guy that was in my grade and the cranky, bossy best friend to my date. The kid my age was one of those kind and gentle souls who was kind and considerate and generally nice so obviously many people, myself included, thought that he was gay. I am certain he was not an actual homosexual but back in the olden days 'gay' was a pretty widely drawn epithet circle of anything that was not exactly as manly as the hillbilly culture at my high school demanded from its young men. I had been in several classes with him but didn't really know him outside of the fact that I had, on occasion, joked about him being gay. This was the first time I actually spent any time with him and it turned out that he was pretty cool. My date was clingy and huggy sitting by me and trying to hold my hand all day which I indulged her in when I couldn't plausibly avoid it without hurting her feelings and seeming standoffish. In the planetarium when we were supposed to be laying flat and looking at lasers interpret the immortal works of U2 on the roof she turned all the way to her side and leaned into me with her arms around my waist and her nose touching my neck. I looked strait up and didn't engage her physically because I had no desire to see how much more obsessive she would be if I was her official boyfriend. I waited out the show and we went to eat and then she took me home to change for the dance. When she picked me up I was not sure what I was looking at exactly, her dress was silvery metallic with lots and lots of furry trim that was floating off and away in little puffs as she moved. Once more in the van she nuzzled in closer than I was comfortable with and stayed that way walking, standing or dancing for the rest of the night. After the dance we went to her bossy friend's house and I tried to find the most central and least dark and secluded place in the middle of the floor to hopefully put the breaks on any friskiness she was contemplating. Part way into the movie I claimed infirmity of some kind and excused myself to go home. On the way out she tried to turn a goodnight hug into a goodnight kiss and I deflected it and headed home alone trying to figure a graceful way out of this situation. I could not, so I tried just not returning her calls instead as per my standard procedure. That just made her bossy friend really mad and she physically confronted me in the halls of the school the middle of the next week after a few days of trying to avoid the needy girl. She yelled at me and said I was a jerk for using her friend and being all cuddly and whatnot on our date and then just ignoring her. I tried to calm her down to avoid a scene but she was having none of it and went right on accusing me of leading her friend on and then just ignoring her. I made some lame excuses about why I hadn't been in touch, not the truth because I didn't dislike the girl and didn't want to hurt her feelings but at the same time I was not interested. I needed a way out and so I made a plan.

The Wrong Girl Can be a Stalker

As a senior there was a wonderful thing that happened, they shipped up a brand new batch of younger girls to go to our school. These were special in a couple of ways, first they thought older boys were pretty awesome because we were older boys. Second, because our junior high school only had two grades they were going to school with us for the first time so they had no idea about our failings or lameness. I am a wide-net fisherman by heart and when I wasn't legally tied down into a specific 'going out' type situation I was always trying to work the field and see who was available. There was a cute girl who was on the dance team that practiced at the same time as the wrestling team so many times we were waiting after at the same time for rides or for friends who needed rides. I was hitting on her and flirting whenever that happened and after a week or so I offered her a ride home and we drove out to her house talking and I asked her out on a date. We went out that Friday and it was fairly uneventful but the next Monday she was waiting for me outside my first period class waiting to walk with me to my locker. I thought that was okay but then after the next class she was there too, and the next. I started to get a little nervous that she was more into this than I was and she was trying to monopolize me. She was waiting after wrestling practice and asked if I wanted to go to her house and hangout. I begged off and this pattern of her being right where I was became the norm for the next several days. For a guy trying to keep the options open there is nothing worse than a fish who wants to stay in the net. There was a girls choice dance coming up the next week and she asked me to go with her. The unspoken and sometimes spoken rule at our school was that you went with whoever asked you first unless you were previously spoken for. I accepted her offer but tried to make clear that we were not boyfriend and girlfriend but a boy and a girl that were friends. In the week leading up to the dance she was at every single one of my classes and waiting at lunch and she even found out where I lived and dropped off some cookies to my house. I was starting to get worried.

Peeing Off the Overpass

I am not sure who introduced me to the pastime, or even sport of peeing of overpasses but that guy was truly a pioneer and innovator. In our rural community there were several overpasses that went over the freeway but were on dark and distant roads which offered the magical mix of exposure and anonymity. The game goes like this: you and some bored friends get some big drinks 32, 44 even 64 oz if you are a pro. Then you drink, drinking makes you need to urinate and then you must get to the starting line which is a turn down a dark nearly abandoned rode out to an unlit and secluded viaduct. Then you start to laugh because it is actually really funny to think of even before you start. Finally, you line up, pinched off and primed and ready to go and wait for a car or truck or if the gods of little boy mischief be really good, a jeep or convertible. You time it, line it up and let fly. It sounds crude and that is because it is but it is unbelievably entertaining and one of the funniest sounds in the world. Every once in a while someone who had driven under the overpass and was victimized would pull over and yell some threats and curses. We could laugh at them and do so as we pleased because the shortest route back to where we were standing, by road ,was at least ten or fifteen minutes and there was plenty of time to disappear into the winding roads through the fields and orchards. We went and did this probably twenty times or so inviting and initiating other younger boys and in one magical experience a girl who required her hands to be held as she sat over the edge so that she could have a piece of the comedy action. It was hilarious but not an ideal safety situation. In a perfect bookend to my overpass peeing journey when I was in college and up for a visit I was driving in the car with my best friend going home just riding and talking and as we drove under the overpass we were assaulted with a twin stream of comedy gold that ran right up and over the car and sent us into paroxysms of laughter. It was even funny from the victims perspective and that is not often the case in pranks. Not often at all.

There is no Beer in the Trunk

I had a friend named Shawn who I had nicknamed 'Ray' because his middle initial was just 'R' and I once joked that it should stand for 'Ray'. It is actually not that funny or catchy but I repeated it often enough that other people started calling him that and it caught on. He was a lot crazy and whenever you thought you knew what he was going to do next, you were wrong. So very wrong. He was fond of doing and saying goofy things, many times with a reckless disregard for the repercussions. Sometimes it was just weird funny stuff like every time he would get a drink from drinking fountain he would go up on tippy toes and then wrap his legs tightly around the machine squat low enough to drink and then start thrusting his hips in a manner suggestive of a young pup on with the 'hump everything' biological compulsion. It was funny every time even if it had the tendency to put one off the desire to be the next one to use the machine. One night we were heading out to do something or something else I cannot remember exactly but either way we were in my Ford Fairmont with two other guys when I was pulled over by the local law and asked what we were up to. I got my papers and license and gave it to the officer who went back to do whatever those dudes do when they sit in their car and my friend Ray started getting restless and messing around while we waited. I was trying to get him to just relax and not cause us anymore trouble as the officer re-approached the car. As he was talking to me about why he pulled me over, lights off at dusk, my idiot friend staged whispered to me, “Don't tell him about the beer in the trunk.” Awesome, thanks idiot. Deputy Do-Good's ears perked and he was on the case of what, to anyone who was not an idiot, was clearly a joke. He asked me in all seriousness if there was beer in my trunk, I answered truthfully, no. He was not convinced and asked us all to step out from the vehicle and sit on the side of the road. He asked my permission to search the trunk and I told him sure. He asked me to unlock it and I told him there was no need because the latch was broken. He had at some point called in back up because another cop rolled up to help throw my stuff on the ground. My trunk, very much the reflection of my sick mind, was a terrible jumble of camping and climbing gear poised and ready in case there was ever a sudden need to climb or camp my way out of a sticky situation. My stuff was being pulled out and piled on the ground all William Nilliam, Sorry for using the formal term, but you know how pedantic I get when I reminisce about my friend causing me a hour of humiliation on the side of a road because he thought it would be funny to joke about underage drinking to a cop. Underage drinking is no joke. We sat and fidgeted and talked among ourselves while the local officials finished their fruitless search. The cop that pulled me over came and gave me one of the obligatory cop lectures about how we shouldn't do what we didn't do and he said we were free to put my stuff back in the trunk and go on our way. It took about10 minutes to re-stuff the crap back in the trunk and get on our way and during that time we spared no effort in expressing our displeasure at our idiot friend's choice of joke and choice of timing. In retrospect it is actually funnier than at the time but it is still not that funny.

Smoking is no Joke

The same friend who had the criminally altered drivers license was not finished with his run of delinquency and ne'er-do-well-ism. I was hanging out with him one day after school and we found ourselves a pack of cigarettes in parking lot, half-full; the pack not the lot. We thought that it would be funny to drive around our small town with the windows rolled down ostentatiously smoking some cancer phallus' and see if anyone freaked out. If you think this sounds like a lame way to spend an afternoon, know this, what we had planned was even more lame so, yeah, it really comes down to perspective and relativity. Look, I don't want to bog you down with a lot of real high level developmental psychology mumbo-jumbo just know that it was the least bad of our limited options. We rolled down the windows and lit the cigarettes and held them out the windows, looking cool and blowing minds. Well, we were actually having trouble blowing minds because no one seemed to care. Seeing that we were having no effect we called off the prank on account of lameness. I thought the whole thing was gone and forgotten until several weeks later my dad came storming in while I was eating breakfast and asked why there was a cigarette burn on the back seat of my car. I didn't remember right away because none of my passengers smoked, then I remembered. I told my dad that my friend was pretending to smoke as a joke and an ember must have blown back in the window. He missed that 'pretending' part and started yelling at me about how smoking was no joke and that he could get addicted and how most smokers want to quit but they can't. All good points I said but he was not smoking he was just pretending. My dad replied that his brain didn't know he was pretending and that he was going to be addicted exactly like someone who 

wasn't pretending. I tried a couple of times to tel him he had not actually put the cigarette to his mouth but my dad had heard what he needed to fuel his misinformed righteous indignation and he grounded me from the car for the week. I waited for him to go to work and then ungrounded myself. My friend never took up smoking.

I Am the Wussiest Criminal Ever

After I got the ticket for possessing live fish I was required to go to the juvenile court for the third time in my life and for the third fishing related crime. I got dressed up really pretty and my mother and I made our way into the courthouse to fill out some paperwork and wait. I could tell from how the other kids looked that I was probably the only one there on an extra credit related offense. Many were in detention jumpers and some were handcuffed. Oh, the shame of it! There is literally no more wussy reason to have to be involved in the justice system then my crime, at that moment I wanted so badly to have some serious street-cred worthy bad-A crime, but no dice – not even fake fuzzy mirror dice. It was one of those courts like traffic court where they have everyone sit in the audience and here everyone else's crimes and plea's and then have their turn. There were assaulters, thieves, burglars and drug users in the queue ahead of me. I was wracked with self-conscious nerves as I waited for my turn to say my crime, the most silly crime of the day and have to plead guilty to it. My name was called and I walked to the place where the accused stand, front and center in front of a matronly looking judge who was reading my charges off a court document she had in front of her. She asked if I knew why I was there and I said I had been catching bluegill and keeping them in a bucket to take to the ponds at my high school for extra credit. She asked if I had known it was illegal to keep caught fish alive in a bucket, I said no. She asked if My teacher who offered the assignment as extra credit knew, I said I presumed not. She asked if I had thrown the fish back, and I told her that the officer had told me it was okay for me to keep them to take to school. She gave a pretty dramatic eye roll and wrote something on the paper. She told me that she got more tickets from that wildlife officer than from all of the others combined and that he was sometimes overzealous in his application of the law. She asked me to do her a favor, she didn't want to punish me for trying to get extra credit but if she dismissed the case entirely she would have to do lots more paperwork but if I would agree to plead guilty she would reduce the fine to 25 cents and we could go on with our lives. It sounded good to me so I made the deal and was relieved the fine was not the 75 dollar one that had been listed in the bail letter I received. I was wrongly convicted by I am at heart a pragmatist and a quick, and more importantly cheep, resolution was more important to me than fighting the good fight.

I Have Live Fish and My Friend is not a Black Woman

The same teacher who was nervous about helping me learn to wrestle one-on-one was also a biology teacher who offered a little extra credit for anyone who wanted to bring a plant or animal into the school greenhouse and ponds that were in the center of the square of classrooms. My friend and I decided to go to the local pond and catch some blue gill and cash in on the offer. We went during the next period when we were supposed to be in class. We headed out to the pond with an ice cream bucket ready and a makeshift net made from some sports equipment that we rounded up in the downstairs of the school. We had only been out fishing for about half of an hour when we were set upon by the fish cop. He asked what we were doing out of class and we told him we were catching fish for our biology teacher. Which was true in the sense that he said that we could bring him specimens. Not true in the sense that he told us to skip school and go capture live wild fish and transport them contrary to law. The officer asked to see our id and licenses. We showed him our drivers licenses and had to admit that we didn't have fishing licenses per se. While he was looking at our licenses and making a little lecture about how we could not posses or transport live fish he made a astute observation, that my friend was not a black woman. We had in the recent days past been in a Air Force dog and pony show and they had handed out pamphlets that had the requisite and obligatory diversity photo which includes one of each flavor of person arranged by race and gender into a 'everyone is welcome' bouquet. My friend had noticed that their heads were the same size as his head on his license and he had carefully cut out the head of a black woman to paste carefully over his head on his license. It was a really close match and without careful scrutiny looked pretty real. My friend had actually forgotten he had made the alteration and was startled to realize he just handed a peace officer a altered id. The Guy was being a weenie already and now he started talking about the crime of altering official government id being a felony and that he may have to take my friend in. My friend was obviously not trying to pass as a smiling black woman so it clearly was a goof but Mr. fish cop still took the time to set us strait. In the end he ended up giving us a ticket for fishing without a license and possessing live fish. He did let us keep the fish for extra credit. Not a total loss then.

A Coach is Uncomfortable Helping Me

My lack of success against top flight wrestling competition was not for lack of trying but rather an ignorance of the techniques and skills. I decided to ask the assistant coach for a little extra help with a few moves after practice. He was more than happy to help and was running through a couple skills with me after practice. There were a couple of other guys and their dad doing some extra practice and staying late with us. We were working on a move called the bow and arrow where the top wrestler drives his head into the ribs of the bottom wrestler while pulling in his head and leg into a cradle hold. He was demonstrating the hold after I tried it a little incorrectly when he noticed that the other guys had packed it in and he suddenly realized he was all alone in the wrestling room with a kid. He got very uncomfortable and jumped up and said that I had it down and walked strait for the door and was gone in less time than it took me to get up and get my stuff together. I didn't know what was going on at the time and thought I had maybe done something wrong. It was not until I was driving home that I realized that he was probably nervous about being alone with a student. After that day he never had time to help me again. He was a really cool guy I felt like I needed to tell him that I was not worried about being alone with him but I think with the way the world was and is it is just better for adults to never be alone with kids just so there is never even a question. I guess that is smart but too bad for the vast majority of people who miss out on friendship and mentoring because there are some perverts out there.

I Am Not a Good Person

After I drove away I took the dog to the nearby pond where there was a dumpster. I don't know if that was the best way to send this beloved pet off but I was so rattled it was the only thing I could think of. I drove up to the dumpster and opened the trunk. I wrapped the nearly dead animal in the blanket so I wouldn't have to touch him and tried to lower the blanket and dog as gently as I could into the dumpster. Towards the end of the lowering I dropped the dog a little and he yelped piteously. I was crying a little when I got back into my car and I considered the dog's slow suffering death and decided that ethically I was bound to kill the dog to save it the suffering. I sat in the car thinking of how to dispatch the mortally wounded animal and couldn't work up the courage to use a knife to mercifully end his misery. The only other thing I could think to do was to smash his head with a heavy rock and I couldn't bring myself to do it. I finally gave in and drove off without doing anything resigning the poor helpless creature to a slow painful death. I hated that I was a coward, I hated that I had hit a dog, and I hated myself most of all. I went home and got in the tub and cried for a little bit. When I was done I got a flashlight, a gun and some bullets and resolved to do the right thing. I drove back, pulled up to the dumpster, shined the flashlight in and saw the now dead dog that had struggled free from the blanket before dying. The agony of my failure hit me too hard and I vomited on the ground and then said sorry to the dog and cursed myself for being such a coward and letting this poor animal suffer. I drove home and went to bed without talking to anyone. 

I Ruin A Get Together

On the road between the high school and my house is a mildly curvy road that was lined with houses with driveways that emptied right onto it. The combination of fast traffic and limited visibility for driveways had been the cause of one of my friend's mom death when she was struck by a police truck as she backed out of her driveway. Just a few blocks from the scene of that tragedy I had my own incident which was nothing on the scale of having your mom die but a decent day-wrecker nonetheless. It was a nice fall afternoon and I had been late at school at wrestling practice. I was driving a little over the speed limit but no dramatically so when I rounded a soft corner and saw a group of about 20 kids playing on a lawn so I slowed down a little. I was watching the kids and didn't notice that their dog, a good sized golden retriever had run into the road. I hit him hard and stopped, absolutely sick to my stomach. I backed up the car a little and I saw the dog moving and thought for one moment that maybe it wasn't that bad and the dog would be okay. Hope springs eternal. When I got out I saw right away that this was not going to go well. The dog was broken in half and was painfully dragging its back legs and yelping. I almost puked with the shock and horror of it and the kids all came running over to see if the dog was okay. I started to blubber about how I was sorry and that he just ran out and I couldn't stop and I wished I could just get in my car and drive away but I thought protocol indicated I should stay and help where I could. When the kids saw how badly hurt the dog was they started to cry and try and hold the dog who was whimpering and yelping in quite a bit of pain. Some of the older kids started yelling at me and telling me they hated me and a couple grabbed handfuls of gravel and threw them at me. It was okay I hated myself too. A grandfatherly looking guy ran over and saw how bad the dog was and that I was a little shell shocked. He realized as I had that the dog was not going to get better and that the best thing was to put it out of its misery. He asked me if I could take the dog away and put it down I told him that I would and we carefully pulled the dog away from the distraught children and laid him in my trunk on a blanket that I had in there and I drove away as some kids ran towards the car crying and other went back to the lawn still sobbing. I never found out what kind of gathering the group of kids and their parents were having but I think it is safe to say it was not the best-whatever-it-was they had ever had. 

How I Misspend My Days

School was never held much of a draw for me except as a place with a captive audience and a place where girls were bussed in and left for hours on end. At this point in my high school career I had lost all respect for the rule of law and was spending much more time out of school excusing myself into my own custody to go rock climbing, go to a thrift store or just head home for a nap. A typical day would find me at school bright and early so that I could broadcast my announcements and feed my narcissism. After that was done I would consider that chance of rounding up a girl and inviting her out for a day of fun in lieu of education for the day. Many days I could find just such a girl and we would be off to frolic in the Autumn mists. Some times I could not find a cohort and I was faced with the unpleasant prospect of having to playing a hooky solo. Sometimes that would drive me into the desperate action of going to class. That is no way to spend a day. I was absent from class and classes two or three days a week and by the end of the first term I was getting warnings from all corners that I was heading towards ineligibility and disciplinary action. I did not take those warnings seriously and I continued to goof off putting my debate, wrestling and student council gigs in serious jeopardy. Everyday the noose tightened and every day I thought that someday soon I would definitely straighten up and fly right. I was going out with lots of different girls mostly younger ones but the girl I really wanted was at the moment in a relationship with a dirt bag so I was always trying to get her to skip school with me and weasel my way into the starting job on the boyfriend team.

Cups and Cups of Puke

When I was not engaged in combat sports I was still very active in the tricky word fighting of debate. My debate coach was a very selfless and generous guy who would take extra weekends to take us to debate tournaments and on occasion would even drive us there with his own miniature van. On such trip was to an invitational tournament somewhere way up north and the school wouldn't let him use a school suburban to make the trip so he took us himself. After the two days of the tournament we were heading home and he stopped to buy us all lunch. An hour or so into the return trip home a goofball kid who was siting in the back asked if anyone had an empty cup he could use. He didn't say what it was for and he was definitely not in any rush when he asked. He got what he asked for and the second it was in his hand he brought it to his lips and vomited into it in the least violent way I have ever seen. It was like he was filling the cup from some demonic soft serve machine and then here is where it gets weird. When the cup was full he just stopped lifted his head up and asked for a second cup. I cannot express to you how incredibly bizarre this whole vignette was. He had slow puked a cup full, stopped and said he still needed to puke some more. He got a second cup and filled it mostly full in the same eerily calm manner. By the time he had almost 40 steaming ounces of putrescent vomit it his cups word had reached the front of the van that he was sick and we needed to stop. When we stopped the kid was going to get out and go to the bathroom and clean up and discard his payload but as he tried to extricate himself from the back seat without using his hands because he was still holding the puke cups he spilled them hither and yon. We all got to stop and get out at a car wash for about an hour while our poor long-suffering saint of a coach tried his best to clean his own car as penance for trying to help kids succeed in extra curricular activities. No good deed. . . no good deed, indeed.

Continued Athletic Glory

I wrestled four more times before I became ineligible to wrestle for the rest of the season because I skipped so much of school, but more on that later. I went 1-3 in those four matches and they were pretty much more of me being well and soundly outclassed in all aspects of the wrestling game. The only thing I am proud of in that stretch of three losses was a compliment I got from a guy from the other team's audience that sought me out after I lost a hard fought match. He caught up with me and asked how long I had been wrestling and I told him it had been about two and a half months. He said he could tell I didn't have much experience but that he had never seen anyone ever fight harder in a losing effort. At the time I was still nursing my pride and my feel-bads were much too poopy to appreciate his compliment. When I reflected on it I can't think of higher praise then to have recognized for fighting my hardest in the face of inevitable failure. My one win in this final stretch was right in line with my previous victories in that it came at the expense of someone in need of medical attention. When the kid came to the mat he looked like a plague victim strait out of central casting. His eyes were glassy and his skin pale and he was having trouble standing up to get the match started. The whistle blew and I shot in for the take-down which I landed easily. The kid fell really hard and almost without any resistance. I was actually concerned for his safety so I let him go and stood up while he writhed on the ground trying to stand up. My coach was yelling at me to keep wrestling but it felt morally wrong to attack a kid who should be in bed at the least and maybe on a lactated Ringer's solution drip, more in an abundance of caution than anything. While my coach screamed at me to fight on the kid had finally regained his footing. I told my coach that he looked really sick and that I should leave him alone. The poor guy was unstable trying to maintain his footing without any attempt at assuming a wrestling stance. If you are familiar with the Mortal Kombat video games he looked exactly like the standing but stunned and defeated foes in that game when the computer voice commands you to, 'Finish Him!”. I was ordered to wrestle till the whistle and I waded into inglorious battle by gently, almost tenderly, taking my opponent to the mat. I laid him on his back and he resisted not at all while I knelt beside him and pressed his shoulders to the mat with my hands in his armpits and my thumbs over his shoulders. The ref signaled the two points for the take-down and then slapped the mat signifying the pin. I stood up to have my hand raised and the poor vanquished invalid rolled to his side and moaned unable to rise to hear the official decision. After the ceremony of victory I knelt down by the guy with his coaches and asked if he was okay his coach said he would be okay as he helped him shamble off the mat. I was one of three guys on the team that won that night and I had never felt worse in victory. Besides my teammates my high school wrestling victories were against a cancer patient, a double amputee and a kid with the funky-gamboo-of-near-death. I was not ashamed because I had fought like a lion, not in the sense that I had fought with great intensity or power but more in the strictly Darwinian sense that I picked off the weak and infirm from the back of the pack. Which is, in point of fact, how actual lions fight. Truly survival of the fittest.

The Leg is Part of Wrestling

Back in the losers bracket I got matched back up with a kid who had no legs. He had legs but only down to just above the knee. When he weighed in he took off his prosthetic legs and weighed in. He had special prosthetic legs with little rubber hoofs on the bottom like extra large versions of the rubber foot from the bottom of a crutch. I thought it was a little unfair that he got to weigh in without his legs and then put them on to wrestle. But who is going to be the massive b-hole that calls out a kid who obviously not had the best of luck in life? The problem was his torso and remaining legs were huge for the weight class and he was fantastically strong from all of the hand walking and other compensatory necessities of life without full legs. The first thing that they teach you in wrestling is the two leg take-down and that was all I had time to learn so it was the one tool in my bag so to speak. Well, I pulled out my one shining and trusty weapon a few seconds into the match and caught the guy deep taking him down with a great big double armful of metal prosthesis. I went to climb my hold up for a pin when he, like the mighty lizard, popped free from his legs and jumped behind me for the reverse. Well, there was some controversy on that point because I was still on my stomach holding his prosthetic legs while he was on top of me trying to impose his will. My coach was yelling that it was no reverse because I still had his legs ans the other coach was maintaining that he was behind me and in control and therefore deserving the reverse points. The poor college kid referee was not sure what the exact rule that should apply here he was sure that it was not a clear cut case of anything but once again who has the nerve to penalize a kid for losing his legs? After a few moments of indication he decided to let us both keep our two points, call a time out for the kid to re-attach his legs and then started us in a neutral position. I avoided taking him down by his legs again and we mostly hand fought except for an escape move he made that had me instinctively grabbing his heel analog disengaging his leg in the second round. More time was taken and then on the third time the ref told him to just leave them off. Besides the first double score of two a piece the only other point in the round was a one point escape I scored in the third and the match ended with me ahead 3 points to 2. Another triumph of my pure white hot athletic skill against the sick, handicapped, or weary. The victory scored me a eighth place ranking in the tournament, the eighth place of shame.

I Lose Out to Able Bodied Athleticism

have the ability to selectively remember the exact details of my past triumphs and gain from them only self-aggrandizing lessons about my personal awesomeness. After my inglorious cancer patient beat-down the guilt wore off as a few hours passed and what replace my rightful shame was an unreasonable optimism about my wrestling ability. I was in the winners bracket after all and all I needed to do was win 3 more matches and I would be king boss champion of the weight I was. Unfortunately the other kids in the winners bracket got there by beating a legitimate opponent. It turned out that my triumph over an immunocompromised grappler was a poor litmus of my actual skill set and I was soundly beaten in my next contest. It was against the kid who would eventually win the tournament so maybe it was an honor to be wholly outclassed by him. Like in my previous battle with a higher class of wrestler this guy realized in just less than ten seconds that he was going to win easily and started taking me down and letting me up. Every time he would let me up my well meaning coach would praise me for my escape even though he and I were well aware I didn't escape, I was released. There are several ways to win a wrestling match, you can win by pin, which most people know about, you can also win by a few points – one to seven, or lots of points 8-14. In rare cases of unusual technical superiority which doesn't end in a pin for some reason there is a mercy rule that stops the match as soon as a 15 point margin is reached. The problem with that for the winner is that it counts as five instead of six points in team points so a pin is preferable. He took me down and let me up 6 times to make the score 12 – 6 in his favor. Then he took me down one last time effortlessly rolled me over and pinned me as I fought like a significantly outgunned tiger. My coach told me he was proud for fighting so hard and I had scored 6 points against one of the best kids in the state. We both knew that was a lie but right then it was okay. I was back to the losers bracket for another swing at a glory and what I got was more pitiful victory.

I Beat a Cancer Victim

In terms of wins and losses my first varsity match was definitely a success, in terms of human dignity and the triumph of mind over matter – not so clear a victory. It was at another Saturday tournament when I was matched up against a kid who had been struggling with cancer and was very weak looking and mostly bald. A worthy foe. We lined up and I was conflicted at my natural concern for a guy who was clearly not doing well and my excitement over facing an opponent that was clearly not doing well. The whistle blew and I shot it and got my first take down in the wild. He fell hard and was already winded as I controlled him from the top as I tried to lock up my pinning position. In about 45 seconds I had him down and locked up for the pin, got the victory and then helped him up not feeling good at all. I was a little sick with myself for being happy that I beat a kid who was clearly not well but I rationalized it by thinking that I had no control of who they matched me up with and I was honor bound to try my best no matter who I was required to wrestle. After I got my hand raised in victory the coach came to congratulate me on my first varsity win and I said thanks but I thought I needed to fight someone less likely to die when I fought him to feel like a real winner. I got my chance the next round as I entered the winners bracket.