i used to wrestle.

after that sentence, this entry could go in any of about a thousand directions. i could talk about the time that our coach pulled a few of us aside after very unacceptable losses and questioned our possession of male genitalia, or that time i lost eleven pounds in thirty hours, or that time on a road trip one of my teammates was so trashed that he told a convenience store attendant who refused him service because he was barefoot that he was wearing shoes that were simply invisible. i s'pose it's like that when you start to talk about something that was such a big part of your life for so long.

you wish i would talk about all that stuff, cause right now all i'm gonna talk about is my bum knee. sophomore year i didn't play football, i'd had enough by then, what with after playing in seventh, eighth and ninth grades, so i did preseason wrestling instead. i figured it would be helpful, being in wrestling shape was way different than being in football shape and no small fraction of the first few weeks of the season was devoted to the adjustment. it went well enough, i felt like i had a pretty nice head start on the season, so there weren't any complaints as far as that went. but then the night before our first match of the season, i tore up my left knee in practice.

it wasn't anybody's fault really, we were going live, and someone fell into my knee from the left and forced the joint inward, toward the other knee. anyone who is aware of basic anatomy likely knows that the knee joint isn't a mutildirectional joint like that, so when it happened, i heard a loud crack, the sort of crack that makes you wish that maybe you'd just joined the chess club or maybe devoted your time to being a better student instead of doing a sport. it wasn't serious, not as knee injuries go anyway, just a slightly torn ligament, the MCL. i didn't have to have surgery or anything like that, the most intense procedure i had to endure was an MRI.

despite the lack of severity, however, my knee gives me old man powers. you ever talk to an old guy on a cloudy day and hear him tell you that it's gonna rain because he feels it in his bones? besides being creepy, they're like always right. i can do that now too. it's nuts. even on days that are a bit cloudy and cool, my left knee seems a bit more sensitive than on other days. it also creaks and pops a lot, which surprises a lot of people, i guess mostly because i'm not old enough to have stuff that creaks and pops like that.

i figure by the time i'm 26, i'll have a cane.

feeling: gimpy
thinking of: lunch
music: "the chicken cow" wesley willis