Not the author and not his sibling, either
One of my sons joined the wrestling team this year. Well, sort of. In your first year on the team you aren’t allowed to compete but can be a “manager”. Which means you show up early and smack around with the other managers until the “real” wrestlers show up. I’ll grant you when they do, the “managers” immediately pick up brooms and sponges and have the place tidied up as best they can before coach arrives. They are, however, pubescent at the oldest, and clean as well as I did at that age. So the facility has a unique funk that will almost certainly never die. I do have trouble comparing it to anything, but I am reminded sometimes of the goat barn I worked in when I was eleven.
Yes, milking goats was my first job, which may explain my current mental outlook.
You can’t fault the school’s wrestling program, though, because they are undefeated since forever. Wrestling keeps score on a point system which I am attempting to learn but am finding hard to decipher. It’s not all smashing chairs on one’s opponent’s head or speaking to the crowd from a mic that magically appears from the rafters. It’s more like that kid moved the other kid around in a subtle way so he gets a point and the team score rises through some algorithm like maybe 2y+3x points. Or maybe it’s something else—like I said, wrestling algebra is something I haven’t mastered.
Most matches happen on school days, so they are not that long. I try to pick up the point system and my kids are bored. But then there are weekend matches, which bring teams from miles around to compete all day. My kids team has a guidebook for how to attend a match like this and the first line, and I’m not kidding about this, is “Bring a book." But I don’t--I spend the day scoping out possibly available single moms and working the concessions along with the other parents. It’s all very USA and fun in its way, but seriously it’s ALL DAY LONG.
I have had the kids in numerous sports and the wrestling parents are the easiest to deal with. There are no screaming football dads reliving their fumble-prone youth via their offspring. There are no sharp-tongued baseball moms leaning over the fence to tell you how you are incorrectly coaching third base. Mostly everyone just wants to watch their kid wrestle and go home.
It teaches good lessons about sportsmanship and teamwork and how you should never grab another kid’s nuts.
Oh, it also it teaches angles and technique and now my son can now take me to the floor at will.
Yes, milking goats was my first job, which may explain my current mental outlook.
You can’t fault the school’s wrestling program, though, because they are undefeated since forever. Wrestling keeps score on a point system which I am attempting to learn but am finding hard to decipher. It’s not all smashing chairs on one’s opponent’s head or speaking to the crowd from a mic that magically appears from the rafters. It’s more like that kid moved the other kid around in a subtle way so he gets a point and the team score rises through some algorithm like maybe 2y+3x points. Or maybe it’s something else—like I said, wrestling algebra is something I haven’t mastered.
Most matches happen on school days, so they are not that long. I try to pick up the point system and my kids are bored. But then there are weekend matches, which bring teams from miles around to compete all day. My kids team has a guidebook for how to attend a match like this and the first line, and I’m not kidding about this, is “Bring a book." But I don’t--I spend the day scoping out possibly available single moms and working the concessions along with the other parents. It’s all very USA and fun in its way, but seriously it’s ALL DAY LONG.
I have had the kids in numerous sports and the wrestling parents are the easiest to deal with. There are no screaming football dads reliving their fumble-prone youth via their offspring. There are no sharp-tongued baseball moms leaning over the fence to tell you how you are incorrectly coaching third base. Mostly everyone just wants to watch their kid wrestle and go home.
It teaches good lessons about sportsmanship and teamwork and how you should never grab another kid’s nuts.
Oh, it also it teaches angles and technique and now my son can now take me to the floor at will.
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