Wrestling for me was a getaway. It was a vacation that I loved to take every week. It wasn't that my parents couldn't take me on a vacation, but this was a place that we couldn't actually go to. We couldn't go there because it wasn't in reality. This place was priceless. When I watched Raw, I used to zone out.
"What are you doing?" My brother would ask.
"SHHH I'm on vacation" I buzzed back.
He was perplexed, but I didn't really care. Fans cheering, commentating, and the thumps and bumps I would see and hear. This was the ticket to my salvation, Paradise in the comfort of my own home. The brief tenures would give me "satisfaction", something my parents and I didn't see eye to eye on.
They were more concerned with my school work...and more importantly, my well being. My parents were influenced by television from time to time, especially my mother.
She would always be on my case about wrestling. It had been a year or two after my first oscillating experience. My mother still opposed wrestling, even though she sort of knew I watched it. I would tell her that I don't watch wrestling (first lie) when she asked. Our conversations were as if we were rehearsing for a play.
"You don't wrestle do you?"
"No mom, I don't." (second lie)
How could you resist? Those plastic belts were everywhere and they looked so cool around you waist. Those knock-off belts had to be defended though. The school had it's own Royal Rumble and it's own WrestleMania. That wouldn't go unnoticed, of course. Many students including myself were ratted out by Ms. Valentine, a teaching assistant.
For someone with a sweet name she sure was uptight. She always had this rancorous look on her face and had a vendetta for us "wrestling kids". Every time she tried to make an announcement, she was greeted with the words "Suck it!", she reminded me of Vickie Guerrero trying to get attention.
Flashbacks of last year's incident came into my head when I was hauled off to the prinicpal's office for using rude language. It was familiar territory to me. I wasn't a bad kid, but my rapid heartbeat mitigated when I was busted for wrestling because I knew where I was heading instead of fearing the unknown.
My father was disappointed in me and shook his head in disapproval. My mother was livid. She had just finished watching New Jack City, a film starring Wesley Snipes and Ice-T that focused on a man's ambition leading to his brother's death and his demise, and was completely non-related to wrestling. She used that movie in her lecture. She would yell at me with her Caribbean accent as she was from Guyana.
"Blahh blahh blahh "YA BOMBOCLOTH!"...blahh blahh blahh "YA BOMBOCLOTH!"
My goodness I hated when she yelled a me. "Bombocloth" was at the end of every sentence.
"I'm not going to kill my brother mom, besides that movie is irrelevant to wrestling".
Her eyes glared at me, and then she barked at me.
"The streets are dangerous! You can die out there and wrestling puts you one step closer to death!"
I assumed that she found out about Owen's Hart death. I wanted to say something back, but I knew a slap would be coming my way if I opened my mouth. My father stood there still shaking his head and said he was going to punish me. I went to my room that night and just sat there. The vault of memories opened up again...this time, without my control.
It seemed that wrestling was really growing on me. I really was trying to be angry, but I all I could do was think about wrestling. I held the HBK action figure that I brought from a pharmacy. "I won't be stopped", I thought to myself. There was no stopping me as wrestling had found a place in my heart, in my mind.
My mother wasn't going to stop her goal of separating me and wrestling and she continued to use local tragedies to discourage me. Hot summer nights I would go on my fire escape and stare at the Yankee Stadium lights whenever they had a game. I lived 15 minutes away, so I was pretty close. The lights shined from afar, and I began to think of WrestleMania.
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