My son came home the other day and mentioned something about the wrestling team. Not that he wanted to join the wrestling team, but that they were having tryouts. I looked at him and decided to tell him my experience with wrestling.
When I was in middle school, they MADE us participate in wrestling as part of gym class. I suppose you could call it an introduction to wrestling. Our gym teacher, Mr. Bruzas (pronounced bruises, and yeah, that was his real name) had us all suited up in shorts and tee-shirts, and sitting around the big matted floor in a circle. The circle of combat, like some kind of gladiatorial arena, except the walls were grey cinder blocks and the whole room smelled of stale sweat.
Bruzas would point to two of us and the chosen would then proceed to “assume the position” which meant one would be on the bottom, and one would be on the top. Stuck in this homoerotic position, the match would begin at the sound of a whistle, and the poor bastard on the bottom would try to escape. Bruzas would start his watch, and the guy on top would have about sixty seconds to pin the dude on the bottom. This went on until the bell rang and we were allowed to return to the unsupervised locker room for the usual bullying, name calling, and harassment from the more aggressive assholes among us that took advantage of the situation to gain acceptance from the cronies and followers among us. I remember getting into more than one fight in that locker room. As a loner, I despised bullies as much as I despised peer groups, and kept my distance from both unless I was required to prove myself.
Anyway, during one of the wrestling matches, one poor kid named Scott got himself into a bind. The bigger kid he was wrestling got him twisted around, and locked his arms back. Scott’s legs spread wide. His jock fell away. And his entire package fell out, completely exposing his poorly endowed genitals to all present. I turned my head away and stared at the kid sitting next to me. “I won’t say anything if you don’t,” I told him, feeling sorry for Scott. “About what?” he stated, still staring at the combat. I shrugged, glad that hadn’t been me. But it could happen to anyone forced into this situation – accidental exposure.
That’s not why I chose to avoid wrestling, though. Being strictly heterosexual, the idea of rolling around on a mat with a sweaty dude just never appealed to me. Actually, I found it rather repulsive. Martial arts was a better choice, and I migrated in that direction. But I did find wrestling to be occasionally useful. I’m a big guy (6’3″) and I discovered that combat against smaller, faster, agile opponents was difficult using standard martial techniques. What did work was grappling them. There, my longer limbs and greater strength gave me the advantage. And so I used this technique, but only against small opponents in one-on-one contests. Against people close to my own size (given a deviation of + or minus a foot) I stuck with blocks, blows and sweeps – which I greatly prefer in all cases anyway.
In high school, I had friends that enjoyed wrestling and participated on the school team. I recall one kid telling me how he reduced his weight by every method possible. Apparently they try to match weight as closely as they can between opponents, and there are different weight divisions or something like that. He trimmed his nails short. He skipped meals. He shaved his head. He slept without a blanket in order to cause his body to generate heat, and therefore consume calories at night. It sounded pretty miserable.
I stuck with band. I did try the basketball team for a while, but that didn’t work out. It’s a story filled with personal embarrassment and public horror. I’ll have to tell that one sometime. It’s kind of funny looking back on it, but at the time I was ready to find a hole and bury myself. It’s not as bad as what happened to Scott, I suppose. There was no accidental exposure. But it was BAD.
Filed under: Daily Tagged: | Accidental Exposure, Embarrassing Situations, High School Sports, Public Exposure, Wrestling
Poor Scott! You got me thinking about some of my experiences with high school PE classes and although kids really need exercise, the potential for embarrassment in gym classes is high for shy, sensitive, or less well-endowed individuals (of either sex).
Yes. I hate to dampen my son’s potential interest in a sport, but I felt he should hear the story. PE is a nightmare for many of us, and I still find it ridiculous that we have unsupervised locker rooms. That’s where the trouble lies. But I do understand the school district being reluctant to put potential meat-gazing pedophiles in the locker rooms, and since they don’t know which teachers fit that mold, maybe keeping them all out of there is a good thing.
Did you ever try swimming? That seems popular with those in the taller set who are more oriented toward personal best than killing an opponent.
Yes, I was on swim teams for most of my early life, and on the high school diving team as well. But we moved when I was a freshman to a rural community without an indoor pool, and that ended swimming for me. I was also a very good soccer player, but the same was true when we moved. They didn’t play soccer out in the small midwest town we ended up in. So both my usual sports were taken from me, and I don’t do the standard ones they had – football, baseball, track, wrestling, those were boring to me. But, yeah, I can swim like a fish, and at one point competed on a swim team from which several Olympic hopefuls were eventually chosen (not me unfortunately). My crawl stroke was never fast enough. I usually won back stroke, though. Although I dislike the backstroke because I constantly hit my fricken head on the wall, but I was fast with it for some reason.
Wrestlers were a strange brew in my school.
I always thought they were a strange bunch.
As a tall kid, they wanted me to play basketball at jr. highschool … but that sport just sucked on so many levels for me … as a soccer player.
I agree. Same thing for me.
Whoa whoa whoa! I ran across your post as I was looking for other like-minded bloggers. It’s not a bad post, but I feel I must come to the defense of wrestling. My blog is written from the viewpoint of a mother of two wrestlers and a booster…I have never personally wrestled as some girls today are trying. You said you, being a straight guy, chose not to wrestle. Not cool. You know as well as I do that sexuality has as much to do with the sport of wrestling as it does golfing, football, even martial arts ….don’t you? You admit that it is useful for other competetive sitatuons, yet state the main reason you chose to stay away was because youre a “straight guy”? Trust that there is much more that i could say that im choosing not to, because i dont want to be rude to a fellow blogger. Go ahead and keep doing what you’re doing, I’m not going to hit “follow” this time. But please don’t denigrate this sport. It takes enough hits from the uninformed masses. I invite you and your readers who don’t know enough about wrestling to respect it, to stop by my blog and see why I think it’s the best sport a kid can participate in, and why I think every boy sports-minded kid should at least give it a go once in his life.
Thanks for your response. It’s fine, I don’t mind that you disagree. I rather expected something like this would come up if someone who was pro-wrestling were to read this and take it the wrong way. That’s fairly typical, and I certainly support your right to make your point.
Please understand, I’m not saying that wrestling is homosexual, but I disagree that one of my reasons for not participating is that I feel uncomfortable with such close physical contact with another males. To me, it’s perfectly valid not to do something that makes you feel uncomfortable. And I don’t think of myself as being homophobic in any way. I could, can, and have wrestled. I can, have, and currently work with and have no problems with homosexuals of both genders. But I don’t like close physical contact with other men, in the same way that a homosexual might dislike having close physical contact with a person of the opposite gender. That some people don’t share this dislike of close physical contact is fine. And males wrestling with males does not indicate they are homosexual in any way. Wrestling is simply a contest, and one that I don’t enjoy due to the close physical contact.
As for respecting sports, well, they are what they are, and they have a place in our society. I may disagree with that place, and I may be disgusted with how much value we place on them, but they are not evil. And I choose not to watch them mainly because I find them boring. This is not true of most people, so take my opinion of sports as one that doesn’t matter much. Even my wife enjoyed watching the Super Bowl. I spent the time working on a novel. People like what they like.