I like to wrestle. You can’t say horseplay anymore after the Penn State thing, creepy Jerry Sandusky—people look at you funny. But wrestling, it’s just fine.
I have big, long legs and big arms—thanks, Mom and Pops—so I’m practically engineered for wrestling. I have about a hundred brothers and sisters, and I’m one of the youngest, so guess who everybody’s punching bag was? I used to watch wrestling for hours and hours—WCW, WWF, Hulk Hogan and all them. I used to get stomach rashes from lying on the carpet all day. I had this giant Andre the Giant stuffed toy I practiced my piledrives on. I turned him into a pile of cotton before long. My pops would get home late and wrestle with me. I accidentally broke his jaw once, but it was all in good fun. Nobody got hurt. In ninth and tenth grade, I made the wrestling team and I got pretty good, but had to stop before eleventh grade because I ended up cracking a vertebra. Not gonna lie, I was torn up about that for a good long while. I made peace with it, though. Had to. Professional wrestling, it just wasn’t in my cards.
I still like to wrestle and probably always will. That doesn’t mean I’m a violent guy. Only once have I thought about shooting a dog and that’s because he was plain mean and bit my finger clean to the bone. Then there was the time we whooped up on my friend George’s pops. His pops was always wasted, knocking him around like a ragdoll. He’d banned George from swimming at the public pool because he said George had “zero business swallowing kiddie piss.” George’s mom was Vietnamese and his pops was white and ex-military. One night while he was asleep and snoring like a drunk Neanderthal, George and me snuck into his room wearing hockey masks and kicked him around good. I felt awful about it, his squealing rerunning in my head for a day or two, but I never heard any more noise about George’s pops after that. Problem solved. Although George and I stopped trading Game Boy games and we went Amber Alert on each other’s lives.
Honestly, though, I wouldn’t hurt a fly. I’m being serious. I’ll squash me some mosquitos due to mad cow disease and malaria and them being the deadliest creatures on Earth, but otherwise, why else would I entertain senseless violence? For the heck of it? Just for show?
There was something my pops used to say that I’m a big believer in:
“Can’t spell ‘harmony’ without ‘harm’!”
He meant that in a funny, motivational kinda way. And he was right. But nobody should get the wrong idea. You have to be super careful with people nowadays.
I guess that’s maybe my whole point here. A guy like me who indulges in a little horseplay—a little bit of harmless wrestling—is slowly getting cornered into the turnbuckle day by day. Where’s my representation? Where’s my seat at the table with tree-huggers? Abuse is wrong, no doubt about it, but corporal punishment surely isn’t lest God strike me down this second. Rotten kids never not benefitted from a good spanking! My pops would whoop me on the butt three times—the last spank for good measure—if I misbehaved, and look how I turned out. Respectful of authority, perpetually in good standing with the law. You can try to politicize me, but for your information, I voted for Obama twice. I ain’t no Tea Party tool like that doofus Ted Cruz. I fulfilled my civic duty gracefully, like Shawn Michael’s Sweet Chin Music, so don’t come barging into my house with garbage about my politics otherwise.
I love my wife, Daniela. Dani. She stole my heart the night we saw Rage Against the Machine. You should’ve seen her throw down. Who knew that tiny woman packed heat like “Macho Man” Randy Savage! Of course, we were younger then. Stupider. We don’t do stupid stuff anymore. We can’t, not with our son Eli, and our jobs. We’re getting too old and savvy for stupidity.
So, if you can, imagine how really, really, really excited I was the other night when wrestling came on the TV and Eli was watching it with me and he asked me to teach him a move. I looked at him and thought, That’s my boy! Then proceeded to put him in a half nelson.
“This is a half nelson,” I said to him, “but for your opponent, it’s full pain!”
I guess I might’ve gotten a little too rough because when Dani came in, she screamed at me to let him go.
“We’re fine,” I said, pinning Eli’s head to the ground, “this boy can take it.”
I don’t remember how it happened next because it was so quick, but Dani tried to break us up and somehow, in the heat of the moment, I guess I got too riled up and pushed her off accidentally. I guess there’s no stopping a man’s adrenaline. That’s biology for you. She flew back like Eddie Guerrero and hit her head on the coffee table. Before I knew it, blood was everywhere. We’re talking a Ric Flair level of blood.
I finally let go of Eli and told him to run and get bandages from the bathroom, then I crawled over to Dani and stripped off my shirt and covered her head with it. She had a nasty gash on her.
I felt awful, like my whole body was a sack of bricks.
“I’m so sorry, baby, I’m so sorry, I love you, I love you,” I said.
Next thing you know we’re at the hospital. Not gonna lie, I told them the “Stone Cold” Steve Austin truth. I was embarrassed, as embarrassed as I’ve ever been. I said we were horsing around, that it was only an accident. Dani wasn’t talking, so thank God she didn’t contradict me.
As me and Eli sat in the waiting room, waiting, he tugged my shirt.
“Pops, is Mom gonna die?”
“No,” I answered, “Mom’ll be just fine. It was all an accident. We were just horsing around. Your mom’s a tough woman. Exactly like Ultimate Warrior, but the lady version.”
Then Eli said something that damn-near chokeslammed my heart. Still kinda does.
“Can’t spell ‘harmony’ without ‘harm’!”
Followed by:
“That was a good half nelson, Pops!”
I looked at him and smiled. I thought, That’s my boy, and patted his head.
And that’s the kicker about this crazy world we call home. You’ve gotta be prepared for anything. Literally anything. Bob Dylan said it best. The times, they are a-changing. The trick is—and there ain’t no faking around this—you’ve gotta have all your countermoves pre-planned.