The Cat's Nuts

Tomorrow, I am going to be inducted into my High School’s wrestling hall of fame. What that entails is entirely unbeknownst to me, but what I do know is that when I get up there in front of the 100+ people, they are going to be expecting me to say something. Tonight I learned that my old wrestling coach is going to be introducing me and one of the other inductees. This coach was by far one of the greatest influences in my life. Not that I learned a whole bunch from him, but I think that he taught me how to take it easy. How to take something that can be very stressful (wrestling) and make it into something fun.

Along with accepting the award, I have to give a little speech, nothing major, just a 3-5 minute blurb about what wrestling has taught me. I was talking about it with Laura the other night, and when it comes down to it, the best thing that I can do is to tell a story. I figure that what better way to figure out what I’m going to say then to write it on my blog.

During my sophomore year, I had just come off a summer of working out at the gym, playing a solid season of football, and spending many hours in the wrestling room over the summer working to get better. I knew that there was an upperclassmen in my weight class (171), and that I was going to have to beat him in order to get a starting spot. During one of the first few practices, coach put my in a drilling session with him.

Now this wrestler wasn’t the nicest of folks, and frankly, he was a damn mean person and didn’t like to get beaten. For some reason, whether it was him having an off day, or it was my hard work finally paying off, I was really giving him a run for his money. I took him down and he couldn’t get away. I was thrilled, totally exhilarated. In the split second, I lost my focus and Graz turned and punched me square in the face. At that point I quickly ran into the locker room, not because I was hurt, but because I was a pansy and I started to cry. I didn’t know why I was crying and I wasn’t hurt, but I felt wronged. I had worked really hard and was wrestling according to the rules, and no where in the rules did it say that Graz could punch me in the face when I was kicking his ass.

After calming myself down for a few minutes, Harry came into the locker room to talk to me. He said to me

“You know Mikey, life isn’t fair. No matter what you do, there are going to be things that aren’t going to work out the way that you planned them. Now, right now, you have two choices. You can pack up your stuff and go home, or you can suck it up and go back out there. I know what the harder choice is to make, but you gotta make it.” Or something to that effect.

At that point I knew two things. #1) I had to go back out there, that wasn’t even a question. #2) I had to yell at my parents for not beating me when I was a child, because perhaps if they had, I wouldn’t have cried like a sissy in the first place.

As it turns out, Graz moved up to the next weight class, probably because he didn’t want to cut the weight to stay at 171, but I always told myself that it was because he was scared of me.

What I really took away from that experience, even more than the fact that I need to beat my kids, is that hard work does pay off, even if you get punched in the face for it. That work ethic took me through the section 9 tournament and onto place 4th at states. More than that, it took me into collegiate wrestling at Columbia.

For those of you that have ever watched me wrestle, you will quickly realize that I wasn’t what you would call a “finesse” wrestler. Other than a fancy spin Russian, I didn’t have much in the way of technique, but what I did have was a solid set of lungs and determination. I can’t tell you how many matches I won, not because I was the better wrestler, but because I knew, without a doubt that I was in better shape and had worked harder. I may have looked like crap doing it, but I more often then not got my hand raised at the end.

Without a doubt, the worth ethic that I learned through wrestling, and the determination and self confidence that that brought me, was by far the greatest thing that I ever got from wrestling.

So that’s my speech. Pretty decent I think. It’ll be short, sweet, mildly finny, but still have a solid message.

Currently, I am on a flight home to New York. This is going to be my last flight for awhile as I have been put on a new job in North Jersey. I finally got the address today, and went to figure out how long it was going to take me to get there every morning. To my disgust, I figured out that it was a solid 2.5 hour round trip in order to get to where I needed to be. I knew that wasn’t going to fly, so I sent out an email to one of the project managers and they informed me that I should go and rent a car. At this point, I don’t know how well that’ll even work, seeing as how I’m going to have to travel through Staten Island in order to get to where I need to go. I have a feeling that I’m going to be doing a lot of sitting in traffic in the near future. I’m thinking that some days I may just say fuck it and go spend the night at my parents place, just to avoid the traffic.

From what I hear, this project could end up lasting for a significant amount of time, and therefore, it may be in my best interest to look into just buying a crappy car to drive. The way my company is set up, they will pay me $0.52 per mile I drive in my own car. At that price, I’ll drive anywhere. We’ll see though, gotta see if that’ll even be worth it.

Anyway, I think that I’m starting to piss off the person sitting next to me, so I’m going to go and get working on a secret project. Yes, I will tell you what it is later, but not right now…it’s secret.