Still being patient with me while I look for more pieces of myself.
I got this wrestling T-shirt when I was the senior co-captain of the wrestling team at this high school, Wheeling High School, in Wheeling, Illinois.
By some accounts I was an exceptional wrestler. Some. I’m on the wrestling room wall at WHS and I finished fourth in sectional which means something today. I was interviewed for the local newspaper and had a spread where I’ve got a boot in and I’m putting a guillotine on some schmuck.
Truthfully, I was a very one dimensional wrestler and nearly everyone I wrestled more than twice now has a winning record against me. That says some unfortunate things about me.
However, due to wrestling, I’ve gotten to say some pretty unserious things, and also have some unserious things happen.
Unserious Things
Like I walked onto the wrestling team at Wisconsin. I think I had identified as a wrestler for so long that I wanted to see about the program and see where I fit in.
I did not fit in. It was a disaster. I lost weight. Remember this was freshman year at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Most people putting on their freshman 15. I lost weight.
The dude at my weight class, Grant Hoerr, who was so much better than me I never once wrestled him in the room, had been the state champ at my weight class in high school (130lbs). The same weight class that I got fourth in my sectional tournament, was the weight class and tournament he won was part of a much larger, much tougher tournament.
He also won that much tougher tournament. And then he would go on to be a D1 All-American for Wisconsin as a junior. Yeah, so, yeah. It was awful.
As a result, though, I do have a little bit of cauliflower ear. Which for good and bad is always interesting. The people who don’t know, man, they don’t know; and the people who do, there’s typically a tacit respect that this dude has probably had a bloody nose with a plug in it.
It isn’t, like, a bad cauliflower ear either. Some of these ears look like something you can’t pronounce on a menu. Some of these ears look like some weird percussion instrument you shake. Stay away from those guys.
I lost this shirt. I found this shirt
I lost this shirt for a little bit. It was in the bottom of a bag in my old room in the downstairs of my mom’s house in Mount Prospect, IL. It smelled like suntan lotion. Maybe from when I went to Jamaica with my first and second year roommate Adam.
Maybe I came home and left it at home. And then forgot about it. I was messed up then. Transitioning out of my old life. Struggling with who I used to be. Wrestling with who I was becoming.
Trying my best not to screw up my life by rejecting like one of the great things in my life; trying to figure out how I can find out who I am, while hoping she’ll wait around and ask if I’m still searching, or if she can come along on the journey.
I got married to that woman in 2005, and this shirt came with us to Los Cabos in Mexico. It has smelled like sunscreen lotion and beach sand since, and while I’ll wear it around and to bed sometimes, it’s not likely to be part of attire-life again. Threadbare for real though. Near see through. Nearly transparent.
Seeing me through another transition, maybe. Again, with this same woman. Still being patient with me while I look for more pieces of myself.
