Wrestling

   When Mark and I married I knew that he had been a wrestler in his past. I didn't hold it against him or anything. I figured we could move past the fact that he used to wear a tight slicky suit that showed off certain parts of a man's anatomy while he sweated and rolled around on a mat that was infested with disgusting things like ringworm and staff with another guy. We would just never talk about it. Or think about it.

I am a forgiving kind of person after all.

Well, all was going fine and dandy until 2 weeks ago when Caleb brought home a paper from school talking about wrestling. Mark was very excited and practically hopping up and down ready to sign the boys up on the spot. I on the other hand, had a few reservations.

"What if they have to wrestle girls?"

"Caleb is NOT going to like to wrestle. In fact, he will probably cry."

"My babies will have to wear tight slicky suits that show off their privates (they are called privates for a reason -so they can remain that way!) while rolling around on a mat infested with disgusting stuff like ringworm and staff with other boys."

"I have a dislike of anything that begins with "wrest" and ends with "-ling."

Mark listened to all my objections and then said we should just give it a try for 4 practices and then, if they didn't like it, we never had to pursue it again. I agreed to the 4 practices since that sounded fair. (Plus you don't have to pay until practice #5. If it's free - it's me!)

I missed the first practice but I showed up eager and excited to see how things were going at the 2nd one. With my camera in hand I was amazed at how many kids were there. I lost count at 42 (they kept moving around on me) but they all seemed to be enjoying themselves. At first, it was a lot of do this, do that, contort your body like this, twist it like that. It all seemed foreign to me - I mean, I was still wrestling (Ha!) with the fact that people would do this sport on purpose.

Then while I was watching, I observed this:
                 One of my boys rolling around on the disease infested mat.


I blinked and then I saw:
                    Owen wrestling with a girl.

(I am all about girl power. Don't get me wrong. However, girls wrestling? Against boys? It goes against nature in my book.)

The next second I observed Caleb doing this.

All I needed at that moment was a ringworm to jump off the mat at me and a microphone to shout "I told you so!" into it. Then things would have been just as I pictured them.

As I turned to Mark to share my thoughts of how quitting wrestling would make our boys stronger and smarter men, Mark said "Keep looking."

So I did. And this time I saw, Caleb quickly wiping away his tears and giving us a thumbs up to show he was ok, Owen learning a thing or two from a girl (one of my former students as a matter of fact), and best of all,  both of them getting back in there and trying again. Also, I didn't see one single ringworm on any of the heads, arms, legs or other exposed body parts on the kids next to me.
When I looked through my pictures the next day I noticed something I had missed when I was taking the picture - Owen cheering his brother on. I had been so focused on finding the bad things in wrestling that I totally missed the good ones. Mainly, the boys were having fun - together. Learning new things. Working together. Making new friends.

I haven't completely changed my tune yet about wrestling but I am going to go ahead and be a little more open-minded about it. But only a little bit. And if any ringworm thinks to come home with either of them I will NOT be happy.

Nor will I show any mercy!

Ringworms beware!