i used to wrestle.

it's been nearly six years since i stepped on a mat competitively and sometime last week was the first time i stepped on one at all in about two years. it was in high school, and, looking back, i've noticed that out of all the stuff that i did during that time, if there's anything that defined those years, it was wrestling. out of the friends that i have from high school that i'm still in touch with, even marginally, they're all teammates from wrestling. i mean if you can't bond with someone after saving his hat from letting the vomit of a passed-out drunk teammate soak into it, then what can you bond with someone over?

so anyways, when something's such a significant part of your life for such an extended period of time, you don't really tend to leave it behind, and you notice that you take advantage of opportunities to keep connected to it, not necessarily in the al bundy "this is the ball that i scored four touchdowns with at polk high fifty years ago with" way, even though i think bone mentioned that he thought of me in that way.

in any case, i made it to a high school wrestling meet yesterday that one of the kids in my youth group was wrestling in, and the whole thing was reminiscent of dual meets that i'd been in. the kid i went to watch wrestles for lakewood and they had dropped the first few matches and gone down like 28-0. they were down like 31-3 whenever they rolled up to the studs in their line-up, from 125-160, which is whenever they started to get their shite together. they won six out of the last seven matches, with either four or five of those being pins, i forget how many exactly, to tie up the team score at 34 and since they had the tiebreakers they won.

it sort of did make me feel like al bundy.

feeling: worse
thinking of: why
music: "kiss an angel good morning" charley pride