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.
