 |
|
|
|
The Hard Way |
|
by Travis Erwin
|
|
5:00 |
|
 |
|
|
|
At four, I learned the hard way that bitch is not a term of endearment. Of course when you have a big brother six years older than you, life lessons come early and often.
For example, I was but a mere kindergartner when my brother led me to our parent’s closet. Sliding aside our mother's dresses, he lifted the corner of a blanket and showed me a brand new Atari - still in the box. Along with the console, he pointed out half a dozen video games, a Stretch Armstrong doll, and the frontier Army fort I'd written to the North Pole asking for.
A week later I awoke to find those same items beneath the twinkling Christmas tree. Santa has been dead to me ever since.
The Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy were murdered shortly after Ol' Saint Nick, but perhaps my most scarring discovery came when my brother explained that the near nightly banging on the wall separating my room from our parent's, was not really the result of my father killing spiders.
Though in truth, it was a good many years before I fully understood the term mattress rodeo.
My brother not only tore away childhood myths, he also instilled a few.
Despite my mother's assurances otherwise, I for years believed I'd been adopted to replace Jack. According to my brother, Jack was three years older than him and had fled to Alaska after murdering a kid that tried to steal his bike. According to the legend, Jack would return some dark moonless night and take revenge on me for replacing him.
Needless to say I slept poorly as a child.
Pro wrestling. That was another of the beliefs my brother saddled me with. It was the only television show that we ever watched together, and thanks to him I wholeheartedly believed it was real. No, not the convoluted feuds nor the notion that the matches outcomes were anything but rigged. Not even I was ever that naïve. But what I did believe in was the holds.
Each wrestler had his own specialty move in which he would call upon to finish off his opponent in dramatic fashion.
The Iron Sheik had the camel clutch.
Fritz Von Erich used the claw.
Ric Flair, both mine and my brother's favorite, crippled his victims with the dreaded figure-four leg lock.
Sure other wrestlers used the figure-four, but they lacked Flair's flamboyance. Besides, he was the NWA Heavyweight Champion.
I believed in those moves for one reason and one reason only. They hurt like hell. I know because my brother used them, and many more, on me.
Daily.
There was one benefit to getting manhandled every day by a brother twice my size.
It made me tough. Maybe too tough, because I often looked for fights with those closer to my own size and age. Often as not, I found what I was looking for in the form of a kid named Robert Whitlow.
Robert was a year younger than me and somewhat smaller. Truth be told he wasn't very formidable, yet I fought him dozens of times, never losing so much as a single battle. It was almost boring to take him on, but Robert was the easiest kid on the block to goad into action.
A few taunts of Slobert Spitlow and he'd charge me, forgetting all about the whipping he'd taken the day, the week, and the month before.
One bright Saturday afternoon, after taking a rather painful wrestling “lesson” from my brother, I escaped the house in search of more pleasurable tasks. At the vacant lot I found a neighborhood baseball game already in full swing. I joined in, but quickly decided it would be more fun to smack Robert Whitlow around than to chase a ball someone else had hit.
“Hey look at Slobert Spitlow!” I called out. “He runs like a girl.”
Robert charged, but I stepped to the side and pushed him to the ground. The other kids laughed. He got to his feet, and I shoved him again. Harder this time, and he landed in the dust with a grunt.
He got up again and came after me. This time we both fell to the dirt, but I quickly flipped him over on his back and pinned his arms to the ground. Sitting on his stomach, I bounced on his belly, poked him in the chest, and thumped his nose. All of the things my brother normally did to me.
The other kids urged me on, and, drunk on their approval, I decided to take things one step further.
I would make Robert Whitlow beg. I would put the figure-four leg lock on him. I would make both my brother and Ric Flair proud.
Standing, I grabbed Robert's leg. I grinned at my buddies and then spun around in the same dramatic fashion I had seen Ric
Flair do countless times.
But Robert Whitlow didn't know the choreography.
As I spun, he reared back with his free leg -- just as I came back around -- he mule kicked me square in the gut.
The details of what came next have been blocked from my memory, but needless to say it's impossible to fight when you can't take so much as a single breath.
Robert walked away that day with nothing more than red knuckles, whereas I was left moaning on the ground. Battered, bloody, and sore, I swore off pro wrestling right then and there.
We never fought after that day, but then again, I did stop calling him Slobert Spitlow.
Travis Erwin eats meat and thinks Lettuce, all forms of it, are the devil and the other veggies are part of the Devil's plot to take over the world. Don't EVER serve him a salad. Travis also writes. Visit his hilarious blog, One Word, One Rung, One Day at www.traviserwin.blogspot.com.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|