I guess I'm a typical American guy in alot of ways. I like hamburgers and fries. I drive faster than I should, and I have a few speeding tickets to prove it. I'm starting to get gray hair, and it sucks :). And I like sports. It doesn't dominate my life or anything, but I enjoy sports.

I'm different when you get down to details, though. For example, I didn't get my speeding tickets driving a kick-ass red or black two-seater sports car; I was driving my 16-year-old Ford pickup truck with the rusted-out quarter- panels at the time. Both trucks and speeding tickets are Guy Things - but not usually at the same time. (I'll add in passing that if I ever win the lottery - it won't happen, 'cause I don't play it - but if I did, I'd buy a Mitsubishi Eclipse. Hey, if I won the lottery, I could afford the speeding tickets... :))

And my sports preferences aren't the standard Guy Thing, either. The Big Three Guy Sports are, of course, football, basketball, and baseball. I like to watch football on TV, college more than pro, but I'm not a fanatic by any means. Basketball has always left me cold; I don't think I've ever sat through an entire NBA game on TV, and the only NCAA games I've watched or attended are my alma mater's. Baseball, I like. But I got sour on major-league baseball after the players' strike in '96, and even though I still watch, I have trouble separating the sport from the overpaid guys who play it and the greedy guys who own it. Okay, rant's over... :)

Like many males, I think my interests now hinge on what I played and what I was good at, back when I was an athlete myself. I was decent at most sports that I tried as a kid or young adult. My two primo competitive interests were soccer and swimming. I've said plenty about both sports elsewhere, so I'll leave it at that for those two.

Others I liked and/or was at least moderately talented at, included running (sprints more than distance), baseball (okay outfielder, power hitter), tennis (I think I could've developed that one if I'd tried, but never had time) - and wrestling, which is of course the main topic in this narrative.

I'm not just telling the good stuff in this autobiography, so let's mention the sports at which I sucked - and when I sucked, I sucked badly. Generally, my weakness is in any sport or activity that requires steady aim and deliberate careful calculation. I am a truly lousy golfer. My few experiences at archery were a horror show - fortunately, no one was hurt :). Gun sports - forget it. The field part of track and field - especially the set activities like javelin and shot put and disc - nope. And I even suck at Ultimate Frisbee, which would be sort of embarrassing if I were the type who got embarrassed :).

(Actually, I have to qualify my statement that "not playing = not interested". My favorite pro sport to watch nowadays is hockey - and I've never played a minute of hockey in my life, unless you count rollerblading around the driveway, whacking a homemade puck with my kids. Maybe it's the exception that proves the rule. :))

I'm not good at basketball or football, either, for somewhat different reasons. Concerning football, I enjoyed playing the game itself, always have and still do, if it's touch or flag. But tackle football is not my thing. I refer to myself as "little Danny" often in these narratives, and there's good reason for that :). I went out for football two different years in school - 5th grade and 7th grade. In both cases, I think I was the smallest, lightest- weight kid out there. I played (or attempted to play) end, since I was a reasonably fast runner and since it would've been ludicrous to put me near the middle of the line. It didn't help, of course; I still got turned into chutney, about two plays of every three. I don't recall ever getting my hands on the ball, offense or defense, in a game - even intrasquad. I stuck out the season in 5th (there was a no-cut rule). By 7th grade, the no-cut rule had been dropped; so was I :). I didn't cry. Just tried out for soccer. But that's a different story, some other time...

Basketball was never my thing. I was usually the shortest and lightest kid my age - although around 13 y/o, I shot up all at once, and for a brief shining moment I was actually taller than some other kids. I had high hopes (pun intended) that I'd keep growing, but it was just one of Mother Nature's false alarms.

Basketball is a truly evil game for the short and skinny kids of the world :). Okay, extreme, I know. But it's the only team sport that I dislike. I think part of the reason is that I never played the game as a young boy, so I was late learning the skills; by the time I got to 6th grade, the other kids were sufficiently bigger than me, that it was a mismatch from the start. My actual skills weren't bad - my two strongest suits athletically are strength-to-size ratio and reflexes, and of course in basketball reflexes put points on the board. But the best reflexes in the world can only take you so far, if you're being guarded by a kid whose collarbone is higher than your head :). By the time I had my 8th-grade growth spurt, I was turned off by the whole game.

I don't hate basketball; my kids and I do the playground-hoops stuff; but it's definitely not one of my better sports.

Well, enough of that. I came here to talk about wrestling, didn't I? :)

I had a brief but very successful career at YMCA wrestling in 4th grade. Prior to that year, I'd never wrestled in my life, except brief sessions in elementary phys-ed. Like most boys, I'd "wrestled" with my friends from about the time I could stand up - but I'd never had much exposure to the sport of freestyle wrestling. That changed in 4th grade, when I met Mike.

As you may recall, I transferred to a new elementary school in 4th grade - a school which happened to be located directly behind our house. The school had been there for years, since long before we moved into that house when I was four years old; but I couldn't go there. It had something to do with busing for racial balance, as I recall - I had no clue about political issues back then. I do know the neighborhood school was too small, until they built a new wing when I was in 3rd grade. I remember getting excited about transferring, and feeling sad at the same time - sad because I'd miss my old friends, excited because I'd be making new ones.

For some reason, only two 4th-grade kids transferred to the school when it opened that fall. That seems odd to me now, because there were some other kids in the neighborhood who kept attending my old school. I don't know why - maybe racial issues again. Our part of town was very white. At that time, racial segregation had been legally abolished in the South, but we were a long way from any real understanding between black and white. The two races lived in separate universes, back then. And out neighborhood, being mixed middle- class and working-class, had plenty of redneck attitudes about race issues.

I never had a single non-white friend as a kid - not one. That's sad. It was exotic enough that I had Jewish friends. For some reason, as a kid I always ended up hanging out with boys who were Jewish. Judaism was a rare thing down South, even in big cities, so the Jewish kids stuck together, and somehow I always got to be in that circle. I have no idea why, to this day. My only guess is that I was an irreverent (to say the least) Southern Baptist kid, and maybe I felt an unconscious kinship. I can say that at military school, the Jewish boys were disproportionately willing to engage in boy-sex. I don't know that they were any hornier; but nearly always, if a boy was violently opposed to any same-sex experimenting, it was due to one of two causes: he was a fundamentalist Christian, or he was a macho asshole. Well, more about that later...

Back to school, and wrestling. When I transferred in, I quickly became friends with most of the kids in my class. I think I told elsewhere the story about knowing only one kid when I walked in the door on the first day, and nearly getting elected class president three weeks later :). Anyway, one of the kids I got to know, and who became one of my best friends that year, was Mike.

I'm always reluctant to describe kids physically in these narratives, because I want to keep this as anonymous as possible. But a few words about Mike are in order, since it's relevant to the story. Mike was taller than me, and heavier. He wasn't overweight, but he was by no means skinny. It was natural, I guess, that his two major sports were football and wrestling. (Later, in 5th-grade football, he was one of the kids who regularly creamed me on defense. :))

Mike had been involved in youth wrestling since he was four years old - the youngest age you could start in the program. I'm not sure if he began wrestling in the YMCA program at age four, but he'd been in it for several years by the time I got to know him.

During that fall, I'd started hanging out with Mike and some other kids regularly - of the bunch, I'd say we were each others' best friends over most of that year. I went over to his house fairly often after school, and we'd play games or watch TV or just hang out. As is clear by now, I was a soccer fanatic, and sometimes I'd talk Mike and any other friends in the vicinity into playing kick-soccer in the yard; sometimes he'd exercise his fanaticism and insist we play football. And we played just about the whole range of kids' games, like tag in all its variants. (Anyone remember "freeze tag"? :))

Some days, it would rain; some days, it would be too hot (in the South, "too hot" was 95 degrees or above - and you could have spells of 90-plus weather into October.) And some days, of course, you just didn't feel like playing outdoors. So we'd spend time inside - and, among other things, we'd wrestle.

There were a couple of other kids who liked to wrestle with Mike, but I think I was his main partner. Partly that was a best-friends thing, at first. But after we'd done it a few times, and he'd showed me some moves, I found myself intrigued: "Hey, this is fun!" As I mentioned, I'd been slightly exposed to freestyle wrestling in physical education classes. ("Freestyle" wrestling, as I understand it, is an altered form of the classic formal Greco-Roman style, the main differerece being that in freestyle, you can use leg-holds. Freestyle is the type used by all the schools and youth organizations that I've ever been familiar with.) So I knew a few of the basics, like the opening stances and takedowns and pins. It was casual, and there wasn't really any instruction, and I'd never thought about trying it on my own beyond that. But during that year, knowing Mike and having his enthusiasm and his expertise rub off on me, I got significantly more interested in wrestling.

I recall pretty clearly the first time we did it. It was one fall afternoon at Mike's house after school. We couldn't go outside, or didn't want to, so we were in his living room. It was just the two of us, that day; no other friends had come with us. (Mike's mom was there too, vacuuming or something. Incidentally, Mike's family was relatively well-off, for our neighborhood. His mom didn't have to work, and his house was pretty nice. He was for all practical purposes an only child - he had a much older brother who lived in California - which probably helped financially.)

We were "wrestling" around (no rules, just boy-chaos) on the living room rug, as I recall, and somewhere in the midst of that, Mike said, "Hey, let's do real wrestling." I said, "Huh?" He said, "You know.. with rules and all that." I understood: "Oh, like in phys-ed?" Mike: "Naah, none of that sissy stuff... I'll show you." I had been under the impression that phys-ed wrestling was a long way from sissy-stuff :). But I was always game for something new.

Mike said, "Okay - you remember takedown position?" I nodded. We assumed the stance, facing each other. I remember thinking, "He's bigger than me... but I'm pretty strong - I should be able to make it close to even."

Well - famous last words :). We were facing each other in opening takedown stance. Literally the next thing I knew, I was upside down, my feet pointed at the ceiling and my head at the carpet. Mike was holding me off the floor, with one arm around my thigh and the other around my shoulder and upper arm. Then - I'm not sure about sequence here, because it happened so fast - he got me down on the carpet, on my back; I tried to lip over onto my stomach; he got me in a crotch hold and flipped me back; I tried to wiggle out from under him, unsuccessfully; and he got me in a grapevine hold and pinned me. (The grapevine was completely unnecessary, since I wasn't going anywhere, but Mike was practicing his moves. :))

It was over before I knew what happened. Mike let go of me and sat up, laughing. "That was cool! Let's try again!" Being a competitive kid, I was not gonna let him get away with it a second time :). So we did it again - three more times, that afternoon. And with the exact same result, all four times. The only difference was the particular moves Mike used, and the order in which he executed. I wasn't using any moves at all - unless "wiggle ineffectively" counts as a wrestling move :).

After the fourth pin, I called it quits. I would've kept challenging him, but by this time I was getting a few nice rug burns on my exposed areas (we were both wearing T-shirts and shorts, and barefoot.) I said, "Let's not do it any more right now - my knees are getting scraped raw, and my arms." Mike said, "Okay... next time you can use my elbow and knee pads." I said, "Next time, you'll need 'em - you're gonna be the one on the rug!" Danny, the mouth of the South :).

Incidentally, I don't remember whether I've mentioned it elsewhere, but I had a zillion boyhood nicknames. "Rock star" was the one I heard most often. "Rock star" has multiple meanings in my case - the primary reference is to soccer. In youth soccer, back then and still today, a "rock star" is a kid who keeps the ball and won't pass - i.e., he wants to be in the spotlight all the time. I have to plead guilty :). (In my defense, I'll say that my usual position was striker forward on offense, and at striker you 're supposed to keep the ball, unless you're hopelessly blacked...) Two of my other nicknames were "Motormouth" and "Mouth of the South" - both referring to the fact that I talked alot. (I'll bet that comes as a surprise... :)) In later years, both of my "mouth" nicknames acquired a second, less innocent meaning - but that's another story :).

Back in the living room. Mike knew I was blowing smoke: "Don't make me laugh, Danny. It'll be a cold day in you-know-where before you pin me." His grin made it clear it was good-natured. I retorted something else, and back and forth it went for a minute or two. But during the exchange, I was thinking: Man, I'd like to get better at this. At this point it was mainly so I could at least give Mike a challenge... but I also thought the whole wrestling thing could turn out to be kinda cool.

So I said, "Okay, really - can you show me how to do some of that stuff?" I still wasn't at all sure what he'd done with me - just that it was effective. He said, "Sure - next time you're ready." And then we drifted off into other conversations and activities. I remember riding home on my bike, and feeling the mild rug-burn sting on my knees - and thinking, "Yeah... you know, it could be alot of fun."

I'll skip details in the instructions Mike gave me over the following weeks. We squeezed wrestling practice in between other boy-stuff at first, but after a few sessions it became the main thing we'd do together.

I never pinned Mike during those practice sessions, no matter how I gritted my teeth. There was a basic problem, here. A month or two after this instructional phase, when I went out for wrestling at the YMCA in November, I weighed in the first time at 53 pounds. Mike wrestled in either the 85 or 90 pound class. There was no way I'd ever pin him at that disadvantage. Even when I lay directly on top of him, full-body coverage (and yeah, it looked just as naughty as you're imagining :)), he could heave me off by just bridging with his neck and legs. I may have come close on points a few times, if anyone had been keeping score; there are wrestling advantages when you're small and quick. But when your opponent is almost double your weight, you're not gonna do very well no matter how fancy your moves or strategy.

Despite my lack of victories, I learned alot from Mike, and we had a good time doing it. In late October, when Y signup came around, Mike didn't have to talk me into it. I remember him saying, "Danny, you'd be great - you'll be in one of the lightest classes and you're strong." (I was relatively strong for my size, thanks to swimming and soccer, and some good genes.) I asked my mom about going out, and, after grumbling a little about the money, she said it was okay as long as she didn't need to drive me too much. The Y was within biking distance, so practice and home meets were no problem; and I worked out transportation with Mike's mom for away meets.

So, one afternoon, we went down to the Y on our bikes and signed up. Tryouts were the next Saturday morning. Mike told me that between now and tryouts I should eat light, so my weight class would be as low as possible. (I did cut down on snacks somewhat; it turned out to be unnecessary, as it happened.) That wasn't hard advice to follow - back in 4th-grade days, I tended to forget about eating if I was busy with other stuff.

On Saturday morning, Mike rode over to my house, and we headed down to the Y. There was a modest-sized crowd of boys waiting for tryouts, milling around and talking. I knew a bunch of the kids near my age - some from my old school, some from my new, some from soccer, some from swimming, some from the neighborhood... all in all, I think I knew over half the kids in there, at least well enough to say Hi to. I was always one of those kids who liked introducing my friends who didn't know each other, so basically I went around talking to everybody and hooking people up in random clusters. (I still do that, whenever I give parties or whatever... it's so cool. :))

YMCA wrestling was set up in three age divisions, with weight classes within each group. Mike and I, and most of our friends, were in the middle group, for 9- and 10-year-olds. I never found out much about the older and younger divisions; their tryouts were either earlier or later than ours, and since this was my only year wrestling at the Y, I never found out subsequently. Our team name, incidentally, was "The [name of YMCA branch] Rockets" - all three divisions.

Anyway, our division started at 60 pounds and went up by five-pound increments to heavyweight, which was for kids over 100 pounds. Before every wrestling match, you had to weigh in on a big scale. If you were at or below one of the five-pound increments, you wrestled kids in that same class - for example, if you weighed in at 84 pounds on any particular Saturday, you wrestled kids that day between 81 and 85 pounds. It's one of the oddities about wrestling; you never know for sure until match day what category you'll be in. I think it's a good system, actually. I've never coached or officiated wrestling, but I imagine this makes things a bit hectic between weigh-in and the meet's beginning, especially in pre-computer days.

As I mentioned, I weighed 53 pounds, well below the lightest class limit. That wasn't a problem per se - the category was open-ended, no lower limit - but it meant that I'd be wrestling kids up to seven pounds heavier than me. (Since then, I've found out that some Y's and youth clubs have classes below 60 - i.e., 55 pounds, and I think even 50 pounds - for the 9-10 year-olds. In fact, some Y's and clubs have only two classes, dividing at age 8 or 9. And the younger boys start at 40 pounds. So in hindsight, most of my opponents were heavier than they might have been with another class structure. I think I did really well, considering. :)) The good side of being seven pounds light was that I wouldn't have to eat light, since I had a long way to go before I moved up. (In fact, my only weight-fluctuation during that season was due to an incident that's rather amusing in retrospect, although it wasn't at the time. Details below.)

At the Y that morning, we had around 25-30 boys for tryouts. I guess the term "tryouts" is a bit misleading, because the Y had a no-cuts rule for our division. The session was really to get us preliminarily assigned to classes and to go over the basics of the season, and to sign up kids who needed more instruction for clinic days.

After they got us settled and introductions and all that, the first step was going over the season. We had six or seven dual meets against other YMCAs or clubs, plus one end-of-season tournament. There was some other boring, bureaucracy-type stuff, giving us papers for parents to sign, sports-physical forms, and so forth. We got the clinic schedule - Mike wasn't doing any clinics, and I wasn't sure if my mom would take me, so I didn't sign up. Well... Mike was a pretty good instructor, and in any case I had a successful season, so I guess it wasn't critical.

The next step was actual weigh-ins, followed by preliminary matchups, just for fun. We were sent down to the locker room to change. In retrospect, I feel sorry for the attendants down there... imagine 30 9-10 y/o boys, turned loose in the locker room, few dads or other adults to help supervise. It was a recipe for chaos - and it was, as I recall. At signups, we'd been told to bring shorts, T-shirt, and athletic socks and sneakers. The coaches had already given us our Rockets T-shirts, though, and most kids wore those instead of the ones they'd brought, including me. We'd been told to carry our shoes and socks upstairs, since you have to leave them off during weigh-in.

After changing, we pounded back up to the gym. The scale sat in the hallway outside the doors. We all lined up in size order, shortest to tallest. Naturally, I was very first in line :). After everyone got lined up and the string of boys was as orderly as could be expected (meaning "not very"), our coach, a guy named Rick, got things rolling. I remember thinking, "Gee, our coach is an old guy." I think Rick was probably around 35 years old :).

Rick asked me my name, wrote it on a clipboard, told me to take off my T-shirt and put everything on the floor, and then said - in a deep, game-show-host voice - "[my full name], Come on DOWN!!" You actually had to step up to get on the scale, of course, but he wasn't going to let that minor fact ruin his joke :). (For those who don't know, this line comes straight from an old TV game show, "The Price Is Right" - that was what the host said to the lucky audience member who got picked to come down to the stage and possibly win valuable prizes. Maybe you had to be there... :)) Rick did the exact same thing for all 30 boys. I thought it was pretty funny, actually, as did most kids :).

I weighed in, as I mentioned, at 53. Coach Rick told me I was in the 60-and- under class, then waved me on, and the kid behind me, a boy named Taylor, stepped up. I'd chatted with Taylor a little in line, but I didn't know him before that day (and never saw him after Y-wrestling season was over, for that matter.) He was a little taller than me, and as it happened, he weighed just a little more - 55, on the nose. The kid behind Taylor looked bigger, so I figured the 60 class was going to be just me and Taylor - and I was right. We got to know each other's moves real well that season. (Incidentally, in practices we wrestled outside our class as well as within it - we had to, if we didn't want the same 2-3 partners every time, since most classes didn't have more than 2-3 boys. But the coaches didn't want major mismatches - like Mike and me - and so my range of partners, down at the low end, was still pretty minimal.)

I have a distinct visual memory of that first weigh-in. After we finished, we were directed to form another line, doubled back toward the rear of the first line - a big U-shape, in other words. So when I finished, I went back to the rear and stood there, talking to the big 10-year-olds. Periodically I'd glance up at the scales to check on everyone's progress. And I have a distinct memory: seeing boy after boy, stripping off his T-shirt, then bending over to put his shoes and socks and shirt down before climbing on the scale. I think every boy was wearing white briefs under his shorts - at least, I don't recall any exceptions - and, as they'd bend over, you could see the elastic waist of his shorts pull down in back, and a little of his underwear showing. Some boys were wearing thin nylon and/or light-colored shorts, and when they'd bend over, you could see the seams and sometimes the color of their underwear through the shorts. It was erotic to me - I remember being aroused by that, although I don't think I got hard. This reaction may sound odd, when you know that I'd just gotten through seeing most of the same boys in just their underwear in the locker room. I don't know how to explain the difference, except that locker rooms haven't ever had much of an erotic effect on me. I think I had been involved in youth sports, and changing clothes next to other boys, for so long, it wasn't registering much by age nine. And besides, locker rooms are stinky :).

Maybe this is as good a place as any to discuss spandex wrestling outfits :). Unfortunately, there weren't any, back then. I don't think spandex was on the market yet; or if so, it wasn't in common use. Wrestling singlets at that time were all-nylon. And we didn't even wear singlets for Y-wrestling (although Y- wrestlers do nowadays - the kids at our Y, anyway.) Back then, we wore our dark yellow Rockets T-shirts and green nylon shorts for meets, and anything we wanted for practice. (It's too bad we didn't wear spandex, for several reasons. I will admit that the mental image of a boy wearing a spandex wrestling singlet - in which there's always a prominent bulge, of course - with the word "ROCKETS" written across his chest directly above the strategic area, is pretty amusing. :))

We didn't wear headgear, either, for that matter. I never wore wrestling headgear until I went out for the school team in 8th grade. Shoes were regular old sneakers. And none of our coaches, or anyone else, mentioned underwear, so we all wore our regular white briefs. In 8th grade, jockstraps were mandatory. I have a deep, abiding dislike for jockstraps. They're about as comfortable as a strait-jacket, and I'm not convinced they protect you any better than tighty whities - not on me, at least. And anyway, guys look totally stooopid wearing a jock and nothing else, in my humble opinion :) Cup supporters are a different story, of course - you'd be crazy to play hockey, or tackle football, goalie in soccer, without a cup. Unless you think you'd enjoy singing soprano for the rest of your life. :)

Well, back to the weigh-in. After all the boys had taken their turn on the scales, the coaches - Coach Rick, and another guy whose name and everything else I've now forgotten, except that he was going bald - sent us into the gym for some nonscored prelims. I got matched up with Taylor, of course. We spent about 20 minutes practicing moves and trying to pin each other. We were a pretty good match up, in fact - each of us taught the other some moves, and we pinned each other equally, three times each that day as I recall.

Well, unless you're a sports fanatic in general, and a wrestling fanatic in particular, you probably don't want to read all the details of every match :). I'll just hit some highlights, and then talk about how it all fits into the context of my boyhood.

As I said, we had six or seven (I can't remember which) dual meets that season, followed by an end-of-season tournament. I wrestled in all the dual meets, and I'm happy to say that I never lost a match in any of them :). I won't claim any special skills, except reflexes - mainly, I was just lucky and drew opponents whose weaknesses happened to match my strengths. Most of my matches were decisioned, but I managed to pin a couple of kids. The tourney was a different story. I lost my first round and then lost the double- elimination match, both by getting pinned rather quickly. Sort of a disappointing end to a good season.

Throughout the season, I kept getting Mike to teach me more and practice more with me. I think by this time I was asking him more often than he was asking me - I wanted to get as good as I could. My competitive nature was never far from the surface. Usually we went down to the Y. Even knee and elbow pads didn't prevent all rug burns. And his mom was getting tired of the constant crashes and thuds rattling the glass and furniture :).

I wanted to mention that one amusing incident connected with my wrestling weight during the season. I laugh about it now, but it wasn't so funny at the time, actually - I was worried I'd gotten myself in trouble. The problem began when I came down with a case of diarrhea during the middle of the week. I either asked my mom what to do, and she didn't answer me, or I didn't bother asking - can't remember which. Anyway, I knew that there was over-the-counter medicine that regulated your bowels, because I'd seen the commercials on TV. I went in my mom's bathroom, and found a box of what I'd seen advertised - Ex- Lax. (Unless you're unfamiliar with Ex-Lax, you can guess how this ends, can't you? :))

I wasn't much on reading labels and stuff back then. I just knew that people on TV took Ex-Lax to get their poop back to normal. So I looked on the back for the dosage, popped two in my mouth, chewed them up, swallowed. I was standing there in the bathroom, waiting for the last little swallow of the nasty-tasting stuff to go down so I could drink some water. I was idly glancing over the box. And I saw four dreaded words, right under the name of the product: "For Relief of Constipation". Constipation?!? Oh, my God!!

I was seriously jolted by that little notice. What's gonna happen? Will my poop turn totally liquid? Will my insides turn liquid? (I didn't really think so, but this was medicine...) And, more practical thoughts: What about school tomorrow? What about wrestling practice tomorrow afternoon? That last one I remember distinctly. I wasn't too worried about school - by age nine, I'd figured out that missing a few days of school wasn't any big deal as far as your future was concerned. But I very definitely didn't want to mess up my wrestling career. I clearly remember my most distinct thought at that moment: "I guess I really screwed up my chances in wrestling this year." I envisioned never being able to get on the mats without stuff running down my leg as soon as I flexed anything. (Sorry to be gross, but that's what I imagined!)

I put the box back with my mom's other medicines and stuff, and wobbled slowly into the hall. I was afraid to go down the stairs. I thought the small thud of each step down might trigger an unwanted release.

Now, I never thought of this at the time - in fact, I didn't even remember it until a few years ago, when we bought some old classic Looney Tunes cartoon videos for the kids (and the grownups) to enjoy. But there's an exact, perfect analogy to my imaginary dilemma, in a Coyote/Roadrunner cartoon. In one of the long segments, Wile E. Coyote buys a bottle of "Acme Earthquake Pills", pours a small pile on the road, pours a bigger pile of birdseed on top, and waits. Sure enough, the Roadrunner comes zooming up, stops, eats the whole pile, pills and all - and then zooms off, completely unaffected. Wile E. gets up, reads the label with a sour look, swallows one pill, stands there tapping his foot. Nothing happens, of course. So he swallows the whole bottleful. Nothing happens, of course. Wile E. goes "Hmpf!" glares at the bottle, and tosses it off. And then, you see his eyes bug out, and he dives and catches the bottle a split-second before it shatters, and you see the fine print on the label: "Caution: Not Effective on Roadrunners." So, earthquake pills do, after all, work. And Wile E. has just swallowed a whole load of them. He's standing there, afraid to move a muscle, with Earthquake pills?!? Oh, my God!! written all over his face. And then... well, you can imagine the rest :).

When I saw that video a few years ago, I immediately thought of my Ex- Lax episode. It was hard to explain to my kids why I was laughing so hard at that segment :).

Anyway, it wasn't so funny then. This was around 8 o'clock in the evening, and I still had homework and a shower ahead. I decided to bag the homework - I didn't expect to go to school the next day, after this. And the shower seemed superfluous. I had visions of taking showers every half-hour, all night long and all the next day. So I just crawled into bed and lay on my stomach (which I hated, but it seemed necessary), and waited for the deluge.

Well, I'll spare you the details :). I didn't have any problems that night at all - I slept through, in fact - and the next morning, it was just ordinary old diarrhea, no worse than usual. Clearly my insides had not turned to jelly. I did stay home from school, but only a half-day; I was cleaned out before noon. I was nervous about practice, too, and took the precaution of wearing two pairs of briefs (something I always did if I was worried about diarrhea, until I switched to boxers). Nothing happened, except that I felt weaker than usual in practice. The only real effect was at weigh-in. We didn't always weigh in at practice, but this time we did - and I was down to 50 pounds. For me that was a big fluctuation. Coach Rick commented on it, and I gave him a vague answer. It wasn't a great practice... but then, they usually aren't, right after you've been sick. Anyway, by the next dual meet, a week and a half later, I was back to normal, both weight and training.

Moral of the story: "Don't take Earthquake Pills before reading the entire label." :)

So, what about the sex part, you ask? Well... I didn't promise everything in here was about sex, did I? :) Not much to tell, actually. I never fooled around with any boys I met wrestling. I wasn't really "awake" then, at nine- and-a-half; mostly I just had flashes, like the scene at weigh-in, and they'd go away as fast as they came. Except for masturbating with Ricky that one night the year before, and a few other random experiences like my "dare you" game with Matt in the closet (which took place during wrestling season - I remember practicing my moves with him), I wasn't experimenting much with others.

My whole relationship with Mike himself was pre-sexual. I slept over at his house a bunch of times, and vice-versa; and although we talked about sex sometimes (most notably the night I first kissed a girl - see separate narrative), we never did anything together. I don't remember ever seeing his weenie, although of course I felt it and his balls during wrestling, plenty of times.

And that brings me to just about the only sexual aspect of wrestling (other than the general eroticism of flesh on flesh): You can't freestyle-wrestle another boy without feeling his equipment from time to time. It's impossible. One of the most effective ways to get your opponent turned over on his back, if you've got him on his stomach, is called the "crotch hold." And it's just what you think: you get one arm around the boy's outer thigh, and your other arm and hand right up in his crotch, then you lock your hands together and heave. Variations include getting one hand between his legs from the rear while the other arm is holding some part of his upper body. Depending on the placement and your relative positions, you may or may not land directly on his bulge, and it isn't always with your palm - but sooner or later, with any given partner over a period of time, you'll find yourself cupping his penis and testicles. (I was going to make a bad joke about "rockets" here, but I think I'll pass... :))

I will say that I was fully aware that this crotch hold was different - and more interesting - than grabbing a boy around his neck, for example :). And I remember getting a tingle out of having it done to me. I remember having it done to me by specific boys, and/or doing it to them, and liking that. There was one boy in particular on our Y team, a 10-year-old named Tanner, who was blond and kind of cute, and had a big dick and balls. He was prepubescent - just big. I wrestled Tanner in practice several times, and each time I practiced my crotch hold on him - even though he wasn't always on his stomach. It was probably obvious as hell if he'd thought about it, but as far as I know he never did. Tanner got me in the hold once, as I recall, and I liked that too - except that he immediately used it to flip me and then pin me, all in one move. My enjoyment was extremely short-lived :).

When the season ended with my loss at tourney, I was disappointed, but not discouraged. I was ready to try it again next year, and Mike and I made plans to keep on practicing. Mike, incidentally, had a great season overall - he lost only one of his dual-meet matches, and he went all the way to the final elimination in tourney and nearly won a close match on points. After I got eliminated, I made a point to sit matside at all his matches and yell as loud as I could: "Go, Mike! Get 'im! Let's go, Rockets!!" I did that alot during regular season, too. I probably came close to being ejected a time or two. I remember a few glares from officials.

So, why not wrestling in 5th grade, and after? Well... I don't have any specific reason, I guess. Coach Rick had made a point of telling me he wanted to see me in November again. But I just didn't get around to signing up. Mike and I hadn't stayed as close, for one thing - we'd drifted apart over that intervening summer, found other friends to hang out with. We stayed friends - I can count on one hand the number of friends with whom I later parted ways on mutual bad terms - but it wasn't like in 4th grade. I think that's typical for boys. Girls seem to make lifetime close friends. Boys are promiscuous. You usually don't hear boys or adult men saying, "he's been my best friend since kindergarten", and the like.

One interesting item: If I had gone out for wrestling that year, I might have been too busy to do stuff like poke around in the trash when the neighbors moved out... might never have found my Big Three sex books... and history may have been quite a bit different. I don't know. But interesting to contemplate.

My second and last crack at wrestling was the time I tried out for, and didn't make, the school team in 8th grade. By that time, I was in the midst of my only major growth-spurt of adolescence, and I had the illusion that my newly- acquired size might give me an edge. It didn't. I was pinned rapidly and efficiently by guys my own size, and smaller. I'd been swimming and playing soccer and developing those muscles - and swimmers' strength isn't the same as wrestlers' strength. I don't know the anatomy, but I know the muscles are different. You certainly do different things in the weight room. My boyfriend Kenny at 15 y/o was a wrestler on the school team, and we didn't train the same way at all.

It's just as well. After bombing in the wrestling ring, I promptly went out for swimming again, and had a pretty good year. Our swim coach asked me what I was thinking, going out for wrestling instead of swimming, and I didn't have a good answer.

I certainly wasn't pre-sexual in 8th grade, as I was in 4th, so the erotic side of wrestling might've been fun. But getting pinned repeatedly would not have been fun, and I don't think any number of cute nylon-wearing boys would've changed that :). I was too much a competitor.

I'll say that I had the best of both worlds, really, in terms of wrestling. I had a good season in 4th grade. And I had a cute wrestler as my boyfriend in 10th grade. Kenny wore one of those tight nylon singlets, and it looked good on him, especially because he was well-hung :). In our yearbooks, he's in all the wrestling-team pictures - always in the front row, since he was short - and in several of them, it's obvious. I doubt he sat there on display deliberately; Kenny was alot more modest than I was. But his penis size was hard to hide in those outfits. In 10th grade, when we were involved, we used to joke about autographing each other's bulges in the upcoming yearbook, since I'd be in my swim-team Speedo and he's be in his wrestling singlet. By yearbook time, we weren't speaking to each other - two proud boys, each too stubborn to admit he was wrong... It's just as well - I think that autograph would've been hard to explain, later :).

I still like the sport of wrestling. I'm not going to say much about my present life, but I will mention that I still have a connection to youth sports, including wrestling, and I still think it's great for kids. It's not really a lifetime sport, like swimming, but it's a great way for boys to work off excess energy. Wrestling teaches some good life-lessons. For example, at the beginning and end of every match, you shake hands with your opponent, and at the end, the ref holds the winner's arm up, while the whole crowd is watching and cheering both contestants (okay, more cheers for the winner - but still...) I know it's similar in other individual sports, like tennis. But in wrestling, the opening and closing requires that you be humble in victory and gracious in defeat. Everyone's eyes are on you, win or lose, and if you act like a jerk, it'll be noticed. Contrast that with youth baseball, for example, where the custom is to line up with your team and walk in single- file past your opponents' line up, slapping each kid's outstretched hand as you go. I have see kids take that opportunity to mumble words like "way to go, asshole" to some player they dislike.

I'm not a big fan of studying history for its own sake. I tend to agree with that well-known quote from Henry Ford: "History is bunk." He was referring to the way history is taught in schools; and I think he spoke for every kid who ever sat through an endless, droning lecture on the Compromise of 1850, while it's a gorgeous day outside the window, and there's an incredibly cute boy or girl sitting a couple rows ahead of you... Ford had the right idea, though: Instead of studying history out of books, he founded a museum, Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, where kid and grownups can go and see what history is like, instead of reading about it... I guess I'm sounding anti-book here, which is an ironic stance for a writer :). But bear in mind that I'm dyslexic, and probably would've been classified as classic ADHD as a boy, and you'll understand why reading a history book was never high on my priority list :).

(I can't resist throwing in my favorite ADHD joke here - it's the [imaginary] opening sentence in a social-studies book for hyperactive 5th-graders: "North America is home to a variety of cultures, each of which... Hey! Let's go ride bikes!!") :)

Geez, I wandered way off-topic here :). My point was that, my low regard of history notwithstanding, another reason I like wrestling is that many of its customs, like holding the victor's wrist in the air, go all the way back to ancient Greece and the original Olympics. By contrast, the Big Three American sports were created in the late 19th or 20th century. Nothing wrong with their traditions; I like singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at opening (or "O Canada" if it's a Blue Jays game :)), and chanting along with "Rock'n'Roll Part Two", and The Wave, and all that. But it's awesome to see a wrestling match, and know that you're looking at a 2500-year-old tradition.

In general, I think sports and kids is a healthy combination. Sports and adults, too, for that matter. I still enjoy sports, even though I'm mostly watching these days. As long as nobody takes them more seriously than they deserve, sports are a positive life-influence. Unfortunately too many people - including too many parents - take winning too seriously. This isn't the place to go off on my Vince-Lombardi-Is-the-Antichrist rant, so I'll spare you :). Let's just leave it at this: I'm glad I got the chance to participate; I think my life would've been healthier (in many ways, including sexually) if I'd devoted even more time and energy to youth sports.