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EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK:
MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT
- One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
Team Strategy Was Tough On
Me
Before I met the guy that Mr. Dano said would kick my ass in
wrestling, I had plenty of things on the team to keep my mind
otherwise occupied.
In
wrestling there was all sorts of complex strategies to master.
For
instance, if the coach wanted you to wrestle at a higher weight
class at a future meet, you had to do as he said…even if you had
to maintain your current bodyweight for a lighter weight
classes.
We were often not allowed to wrestle at certain weight classes
even if we made weight, if it was not done with the permission
of the coaches.
When I was in high school, it was permissible for a wrestler to
compete in several weight classes above him. I think that today,
it is limited to one weight class above.
This type of juggling made sense to a certain extent. Every time
we prepared for a match against another school’s team, our coach
often looked at the skill level of each player on our team and
then he would look at the skill or record and reputation of the
wrestlers on the other teams. After evaluating all the kids
involved on each team, it was his job to figure out how each of
us would fare in our normal weight classes, or how we may fare
if one or many of us had to go up or down one or more weight
classes, to prepare for our next match. Our coach had to take
all of this into account and then look at how that would affect
the team overall.
For instance, a few times our coach determined that our man at
the one hundred and eight-five pounds would not have a chance
against a beast in the same weight class at the school we were
going against at the next meet, he would have to form a special
strategy.
Depending on many factors he would have our one hundred and
eight-five pound varsity man stay in that class and wrestle
Junior Varsity for that meet, and then he would designate me, a
one hundred and forty two pound man to wrestle that beast from
the other school in the one hundred and eighty-five pound class.
He did this because he figured that I would have the best chance
of defeating the one hundred and eighty-five beast.
After designating me to a heavier class, he would have Jimmy
jump up from junior varsity to wrestle my varsity position,
while most of the other wrestlers would stay in their classes;
or he would put me in the one hundred and eighty-five pound
varsity slot, and then the kid from that slot would have to diet
down to the next lower weight class.
Then he had the kid in the weight class below the one hundred
and eighty-five class to diet down to the weight class below him
in the next lower category, and so forth. Our coaches employed
various permutations of this strategy.
Whenever I was instructed that I would be moving up, it was
always right to the one hundred and eighty-five pound weight
class, never in between.
Once I was instructed to suck down to the weight class below
what I normally wrestled at. Dieting down was extraordinarily
tough for me since I did not have any fat on my body to play
with.
The discipline that it required from me to purposely starve
myself and limit my water intake so that I could make the lower
weight was especially excruciating. It went against my prime
directive. I was tortured by dreams of food and water always
just out of reach.
In both my dreams and life I knew what the mythological person
Tantalus must have felt like. In my dreams and my life I
suffered the same agonies that Tantalus suffered.
Tantalus was the son of Zeus and the King of Sipylos. Before his
punishment he was favored among mortals since he was invited to
share many banquets with the gods of Olympus.
I forget how he eventually inspired the wrath of the gods, but
he did. Because Tantalus like me was fixated on the pleasure of
food and because of this obsession, the gods devised an
especially devilish punishment for him. The gods of Olympus put
Tantalus within a pit in a place called Tartarus; it was there
that he was made to suffer from excruciating pangs of thirst and
starvation for eternity. It was also there that for the rest of
eternity he would be immersed up to his neck in cool clean
water. Whenever Tantalus would try to slake his thirst by
bending forward to suck up the water, the water perversely would
keep lowering so that it would always be just out of reach for
poor Tantalus.
Even when he tried to throw himself violently face first into
the water in a desperate attempt to alleviate his parched body
he would end up with a mouth full of sand for his efforts.
The gods also kept numerous fruit trees around the pit where
Tantalus was imprisoned. The variety of luscious fruit would
sway at the ends of the branches, just out of reach of his mouth
but often within reach of his hands; that is until he would make
a desperate grab for the fruit, which would cause the winds to
blow the fruit always just out of reach. No matter how quickly
he moved to eat or drink or how subtly or slyly he went for
nourishment the gods made his task impossible for him.
In my dreams I was never in a pit. I was able to move about
freely. Also in my dreams there was a greater variety of food
floating around me than poor Tantalus and always seemingly
within my grasp. I would see plump butter-basted turkeys
dripping moist with tenderness, pineapple and cherry laced
Christmas hams, thick juicy rare T-boned steaks, lobster
dripping in butter and a variety of biscuits, and cornpone with
all the vegetables and fruits that I loved. In real life, I was
tormented to watch my family eat my mother’s delicious meals. My
hunger and thirst would be unbearable.
It was impossible to say which was worst, my hunger for food or
my thirst for liquids; both my hunger and thirst competed
viciously for first place. My mouth lost its moistness from
saliva but was never quite bone dry, instead and perhaps worse
was the feeling that I had “Elmers Glue” that was congealing and
coating the inside of my mouth.
I felt these pangs every moment I was awake and I was unable to
escape this torture even in my dreams.
Whenever I went to grab any of the tempting items of food
whirling and floating around me, just like Tantalus the food
would magically whisk away. Whenever I tried to jump into a pool
of fresh clean water, I also would find myself sucking sand.
Like Tantalus I felt constantly tantalize by food and drink all
around me.
This was the first time in my life that I would learn about
certain fine distinctions of starving under different
circumstances. I learned that it was terrible to starve because
unfortunate life circumstances out of your control, which did
not permit you having an adequate supply of food – such as when
I lived in North Carolina. It is worse to have someone or any
outside agency purposely get in the way of you acquiring
adequate nourishment.
It was something new and unusual for me to make the decision to
go against my body’s prime directive of eating as much as I felt
I needed to pursue a questionable goal. Especially because as a
child, starving had been a very uncomfortable experience both
emotionally as well as physically. Starving had always filled me
with fear.
A part of me found it very perverse that I would voluntarily
starve myself just to lose the weight I could ill afford to
spare, so that I could get into a lower weight class. This was
if not my first act of discipline and a test to my will power --
it was certainly the toughest so far in my young life.
To add to this perverse situation, all of that suffering was
mostly for naught. Instead of wrestling at that weight class at
the next meet I had to wrestle a huge monster at the one hundred
and eighty-five pound weight class.
I was instructed not to up my eating volume, because now it was
determined that at the following meet after I wrestled the huge
beast, I still had to wrestle in the weight class that was one
slot lower than my natural weight class.
The day that I had to wrestle the one hundred and eighty-five
pound beast was the first and only day that my mother and
stepfather decided to come and watch me wrestle. Having to
wrestle at the other school added to my nervousness. In addition
to these disadvantages, I had the misfortune of slipping on some
ice a week or two prior to the wrestling meet and I had crack a
few ribs causing me more than a little pain. The pain often took
my breath away.
I just had to tape up regularly and it was during this month
that Ben Gay and I became very close friends.
The hundred and eighty-five pound animal that I had to wrestle
was considered a terror on the football field and a terror as a
wrestler within the league.
It was
said that he was not as highly skilled as our best wrestlers, in
fact he wasn’t much more skilled than me; but it was said that
he had real strength and toughness on the level of being
legendary.
It was customary for me to feel a certain level of fear before
every match. The anticipation for this match jacked up my fear
at least a hundredfold. There were more things at stake with
this match. My coach had created this strategy to insure that
our team had the best chance of winning overall.
If I lost, my team had a better even chance of losing. My match
would not be the only deciding factor on whether our team would
win or lose, but if one other key person who had been shifted
around also failed then our team would be sunk.
Also, knowing that my parents were coming to see me wrestle for
the first time added a great deal of stress to my feelings of
the upcoming meet. In addition the self-induced starvation I had
put myself through made me very fatigued and weak. My injured
ribs were also a big concern for me. If I turned wrong as I
breathed the pain was jarring, causing my breathing to break its
normal pattern. During practice my ribs often felt like they
would snap and splinter out through my skin. I feared the fiend
that I would meet might just accomplish breaking my ribcage
open. Prior to this meet I looked like a skinny Tarzan, now I
looked like a death camp wraith.
The day of the meet came and before we traveled to the school,
despite literally starving my self and only taking water in by
sucking on ice cubes, I was just teetering back and forth at my
target weight.
My coached warned me that I needed to stay on target for making
the lower weight class because I was targeted to wrestle in that
class the following week.
At the rival school I got a chance to meet my opponent. Not only
did he look like the killer that rumor had claimed, to me he
looked even scarier. Although he didn’t have Jimmy’s beautiful
physique, he had a rangy and dangerous looking body.
It’s hard to explain, but the closest types of physiques that I
have seen that resembled the ogre I would wrestle could be found
on the team of the Philadelphia Flyers or many of the men that I
have seen compete in the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championships).
In fact a man named Marcos Ruas who is known as “The King of the
Streets”, a dangerous fighter from the streets of Rio de Jenaro,
Brazil.
The guy may have been dangerous looking, but he was very nice.
He came over and made it a point to greet me well before the
start of the first match. He was nice, but with an air of smug
entitlement. Not conceit, but he appeared to be someone who was
use to getting what he set his sights on. As we shook hands my
legs were also shaking, if not from fear at least from extreme
anxiety. If I weren’t so nervous it would have been funny. As we
parted he wished me a genuine “good luck”. Not that he believe
that would do me any good.
By the time we wrestled, I was jacked up. Previous to being
jacked up the slightest turn or twist caused me intense pain.
Now I was mostly unaware of pain. As we wrestled it was apparent
that he was not near as strong as he appeared and certainly not
as strong as his reputation had indicated.
In fact he was not quite as strong as I was. Very close but not
quite even in my weaken state.
Up until that time in my life, I have met many men who were
enormously powerful, far more powerful than me. Men such as Mr.
Eithe, and my Uncle Antoino, Captain Finbar who could turn my
forearm as easily as you and I would turn a doorknob. These men
I had never wrestled.
Luckily, I was stronger than any wrestler on my team; so much
so, I could even start wrestling with the lightest wrestler to
the heaviest and go back down again and beat all of them. But up
until that meet, I had never wrestled anyone as strong as the
opponent that I faced that day. It would be twenty-five years
before I would grapple with a man that exceeded his strength.
Another thing that was apparent to me was that I was faster and
had better balance and more squirrelly.
The
bad news was that I was giving up almost fifty pounds in
bodyweight and in addition he had noticeably greater skill.
My parents were in the stands cheering me on. During the match
my fatigue reached a crippling level. My opponent was so strong
that when he put me in a wishbone set up, I felt as if my entire
rib cage would explode. My strength was fading fast and then he
had me on my back, I was fighting for my life.
I rolled one way and then another trying to keep from being
pinned. As I was fighting to keep from being pinned I happened
to look up into the stands to see my mother and stepfather
leaving in what I supposed was from embarrassment.
Seeing them leave made me feel a combination of shame and rage.
It made me redouble my efforts, which in turn made me move in a
squirrelly manner. I ended up getting very lucky and barely
beating this guy by one point.
The
brute came closer than anyone to pinning me, with the exception
of Mr. Chang and a person who would become my friend twenty-five
years later. That day luck had much to do with me winning.
winning.
When I confronted my parents as to why they left, they explained
that they thought that I would be more embarrassed to lose in
front of them. I was never certain if they were right or wrong
in that regard.
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