The Exact Moment My Life Began to Stink

This Tale, this snapshot in time taken in the life of a young man (16 years, to be exact) will require just a bit of background information to be known about first, which I will now provide for you, free of charge. Let's talk about wrestling.
Now, just to make sure that we're all on the same sheet of music here; let me specify. High School wrestling. AAA, varsity, genuine, actual wrestling. Nothing pre-rehearsed, no choreography, no steroids (at least back when this tale takes place). This is a very competitive, rather individual sport (although you are officially part of a team) that generally has its 'season' every school year running at the same time as the basketball season. This, of course, has a tendency to create a wee bit of resentment amongst wrestlers toward the basketball players, due to the fact that in most schools it seems that the majority of the school is focused and supportive of the basketball team, and could hardly care less about showing up to the matches to support the wrestlers. Please bear in mind that all of this background information is representative of how it was in the mid 1980's; things may have changed by now in regard to certain particulars. Also I should point out that there are some regions of the country (USA), as well as individual states, where wrestling has always been and probably always will be THE sport. Examples are Iowa, Oklahoma, parts of Ohio, and a few others- you get the picture.
Competition is broken down into individual weight classes, which are divided in increments of roughly 8 to 9 pounds, usually starting at 98 lbs and continuing upward all the way to heavyweight, which is approximately in the 190lbs plus area. Competition is especially rough in the weight classes which contain statistically the largest percentage of wrestlers, which in my experience, usually fall into the range between 126 and 167 lbs. We're almost finished; just a little more background and we will be ready for the main event!
Because competition for the most populated weight classes is so stiff, (each weight class has only one varsity wrestler, who has had to beat all the other wrestlers on the team who are of the same weight), it is fundamentally important that wrestlers keep their body weight as low as they can possibly get it. The obvious goal here is to achieve your optimum strength to weight ratio, and for those who really dedicate themselves, it helps to ensure that you will generally be stronger than the majority of your opponents, who may not have shown quite as much dedication to reaching their optimum weight as you.
This is a story about what can happen when you get carried away, as I have been known to do from time to time. In this tale...shit happens.
This is 1985. A year of Ronald Reagan, and a little known group of heavy metal heavy hitters, who call themselves Metallica, on their rise to fame. We are just about to kiss carburetors good-bye for new cars. And a 16 year old (soon to be 17) young man was having a good season as a varsity high school wrestler. He had his first serious girlfriend (a beauty named Lori that he had just lost his virginity to), a part time evening job as a dishwasher, and his first car, a '74 Chevy Chevelle. His grades in school were decent, as was his popularity (remember how important that was? ) In other words, life was pretty good, for the most part. There is something going on with this young man, however, that will very soon change all (or most) of that for him. Life has its ups and downs.
He is obsessed with his weight, which at the time happens to be 132 pounds, or slightly over that. That is the weight that he has wrestled at this season, and he has struggled mightily to maintain it (he was not completely done growing, you see). That weight was being commanded by biology, nature itself, to increase, and any such battle, where your adversary is nature, is certain to be hard fought. Any "victories" can only be temporary, and you'll need to have some powerful weapons to achieve even those. Any weapons of terrible power will always produce a certain amount of 'collateral damage'.
The reality is, of course, that the damage is entirely unilateral. The "weapons" employed by this young man to fight off nature's mandate that his bodyweight should increase started with wearing a garbage bag under his clothing to school on the days that there were matches scheduled (weigh-ins took place immediately prior to the start of the match) along with carrying a Styrofoam cup to spit into all day. These were worthless, ultimately, and were abandoned by the young man forever when he stepped onto the scale one afternoon at the weigh-in and could only stare, in dumbfounded silence as the scale judged him to be 1 1/2 lbs overweight. Thirty minutes of exercise of furious intensity, and a noble "pardon" issued from the opposing team (for the 3/4 lb that was still over the limit) allowed him to wrestle in that match. His next choice of weapons in the battle of weight control was that time honored classic that we call 'starvation'. This, too proved to be unacceptable. While it did keep the weight off, the weakness that it produced, along with the frequent immobilizing head rushes, necessitated its early retirement. Next up was the Bulimic's Code of "purging" immediately after every meal. The horror stories depicting 70 lb adult women made the young man sure that this would be the ticket... But it too proved to be a short lived choice of weight control. There were several occasions that the young man could not induce vomiting, no matter how enthusiastically he tried. And the inconvenience of having to rush off to the bathroom after every meal was starting to earn him some ominous dirty looks from his mean tempered father, along with a rather lengthy talk with the school guidance counselor who did everything but flat out accuse him of being a drug addict after a teacher had overheard him retching in a school restroom one day.
It was during this desperate time that he stumbled upon the concept of using WMD's in his struggle. For those who may be unfamiliar with this acronym, we are referring to 'Weapons of Mass Defecation'. His search was over. He had found the ultimate weapon . So what if it carried with it a requirement of a trip to the toilet at least once during every waking hour? After quite a bit of experimentation in order to find the most powerful of these weapons, he found one that was far superior to the others for his purposes, which centered mainly upon keeping the entire gastrointestinal tract in a state of emptiness- and just as importantly, achieving that state as quickly as possible. Correctol,  though it is advertised as "the women's gentle laxative" was the most powerful of them all in terms of achieving that state of GI tract emptiness with an explosive quickness. He ate them like candy....
THE MAIN EVENT
  For those of you who are still with me, this is the point that all that background information has been leading up to:
  We find ourselves in a high school gymnasium in Glendale, Arizona one fine evening, more than 20 years in the past, to bear witness to a significant event in the life of an insignificant young man, whom at 16 years old still had the potential to do just about anything in life. This evening, the young man's school is hosting a post season 'triangular' wrestling match, in which the best wrestlers from three local high schools compete for the top seat in their individual respective weight classes. Our young man has just won the first of the potential two matches that he is wrestling in, winning by a 'pin' after a surprising reversal late in the second period. He had been in trouble throughout the match until the point where he managed to flip his exhausted opponent over and secure a half nelson pin. The crowd, which was considerable indeed (maybe 300 people packed into that gym) and composed mainly of fans of the young man's school team (only natural, since it was his school that was hosting the triangular) seemed to love him at that moment. Never before in his life, nor since, have that many people cheered for him. It was a moving experience to put it mildly.  And perhaps the loudest of all the cheering came from his girlfriend, Lori, who was his first love and who was sitting in the stands next to the second loudest of the cheerers, his father (who had by that point in the day consumed a minimum of 18 Budweisers and could be distinctly heard hollering with all the gusto of any shitfaced sports fan).
  It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. For the young man was, roughly an hour later, wrestling the toughest opponent that he faced that year. This opponent was to go on to take first place in the entire state at 132 pounds, and in this match, it was all the young man could do to simply stay alive, to keep from being pinned by this opponent, who was superior in both skill and strength. He managed to survive the first period, but since he was at a clear disadvantage when the whistle was blown, his opponent was therefore allowed to choose the starting position for the second period. This choice will always be the 'top referee position' since it offers the most control over the 'bottom referee position', which our young man, breathing heavily, now assumed. When the whistle blows signaling the start of the second period, there are typically only two moves available for the wrestler in the bottom position, whose goal is to 'escape' from the control of the opponent and thus earn one point, while at the same time achieve a position of equal advantage. One of these moves is the 'stand up', which rarely succeeds unless the wrestler attempting it is phenomenally fast, or the opponent is a very poor excuse for a wrestler. The other move is called the 'sit out,' which entails explosively kicking the legs forward and, from this 'sitting' position, turning around quickly to face your opponent, or perhaps maybe hooking one of his legs for a possible reversal. Our young man was much more inclined to use the sit out, and when the whistle blew, this was exactly what he chose. It was here that things went horribly wrong.
  The young man had started that day out weighing one pound more than he was allowed to weigh in order to wrestle in the scheduled match that evening. He thought about this for a moment. He knew that if he ate and drank nothing at all throughout the day that he would lose that pound and be able to make his weight by the evening weigh in. He also knew that he would enter that triangular match both weak and dehydrated, which is a really good way to get knocked out during a wrestling match. There was really only one option, though he very rarely (only twice) had to do this on the day of a scheduled match. But as they say, sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, and with his decision made, he had a decent breakfast and got in his car to drive to school. As soon as he was out of sight from his house, he reached into the glovebox and felt for the familiar shape of his package of Correctol. After locating them he promptly dry swallowed four tablets. He felt better immediately afterward, knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that he would make his weight by the time of the match that night, regardless of how much he ate. And the Correctol, as always, did not let him down. He was one pound under his weight limit at the weigh ins that evening!
  But his plan was not without its share of risk, and at the blow of the whistle which signified the start of the second period, the young man fell victim to Murphy's Law. He sat out with all the speed he could muster, and as his ass made solid contact with the wrestling mat, he felt an exceedingly unwelcome sensation, as a result from an explosive event that occurred in the area of his hindquarters- much too quickly for the young man to prevent. He thought to himself with real religious fervor, "please God, let that be only a fart,"  but sadly, this was not to be.
  There was a terrible smell, and a nightmarish, warm liquidy feeling that had traveled down the inside of one of his thighs to exit from his singlet (wrestling tights) and ooze onto the wrestling mat. His (soon to be state champion) opponent made an indescribable gurgling noise, and releasing the young man, backed away, scuttling crab-like with astonishing speed. It seemed very quiet just then in the auditorium, and the young man could hear his father bullying his way down the stands, bellowing out "WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON DOWN THERE?!" The referee, finally recovering his composure, blew the whistle and declared the match a forfeit, in favor of the opposing team, and then threw a rag to the young man, uttering disgustedly "clean that shit up" just as the young man's slopped-up father staggered up to the grisly scene. He surveyed the immediate area, one eye squinted shut (something that is necessary when a person reaches a certain level of intoxication, in order to see- because the eyes will not focus when both are open) and with the blazing bloodshot eye finally resting on the small puddle of stinking failure on the wrestling mat, boomed out a very familiar "What the fuck's amatter with you... you smokin' dope?!!" The young man noticed then the flashbulbs of his high school newspaper photographer's camera along with those of some other unfamiliar photographers going off in rapid succession, one after another. They had been very busy indeed.
                                    Aftermath
The first love soon became the first lost love. There was something of a scandal about the use of laxatives (the young man caved in and confessed after the other wrestlers who were also using laxatives told on him). It was overblown and had all the hype of the steroid scandals which were to follow in the near future. The young man was officially disqualified from wrestling for the following season, which was his senior year- thus ending his high school wrestling career. And with the unbelievable notoriety that ensued, the young man was to attend a different high school in the district for his senior year. It had been a good thing for awhile, but, as the story goes...              shit happens. 
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  .phoe'.

Phoebe Kaye

  sat down and read all that, and all i can say is fuck.
Posted by .phoe'. on December 11, 2007 - Tuesday - 1:40 PM
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  Jessica


  As I'm reading this, I'm thinking "Oh no, there's only one way this can end" and indeed it ended much as I feared. Man, high school can mess us but I think you win the gold medal for the worst high school experience. That's like the nightmare where you show up for school naked..... I almost wish you weren't such a good writer cause I pictured that in WAY too much detail.
Posted by Jessica on December 11, 2007 - Tuesday - 5:43 PM
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  MIKE


  You made a good point- I don't think this came across quite the way I intended it to. It was meant to be amusing (which it ALWAYS is when I am speaking about it), but I have to say that the written version kind of bombed as far as funny stories go. Too damn much detail! =) Just goes to show that sometimes 'less' really IS more.
Posted by MIKE on December 12, 2007 - Wednesday - 8:12 AM
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  Patricia


  Oh dear...Michael, I think this tops your fishing trip story for an awful BM experience! I am aware of the importance of high school wrestling, as our local high school has captured the state championship here in Florida year after year, and I hadn't really given any thought to the fact that it's tough for growing bodies to stay in their weight class.

Truly a detailed event about a most-embarrassing-moment-ever for a high school boy!
Posted by Patricia on December 15, 2007 - Saturday - 8:18 AM
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  MIKE


   


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