EPISODE 5 STINGER

After I trained every weekend for two months, the day had finally come. I walked into the school hall, my eyes widened with disbelief to see what was before me: a real-life wrestling ring!

I had never seen anything more beautiful. Paul and Fergal were standing at the edge, arms draped casually over the top rope.

“Congratulations, lads. Today you get to see what a ring is all about,” Fergal announced.

I was going to run the ropes in a wrestling ring. Like I had seen on TV. I couldn’t stop smiling in anticipation.

But first things first, practicing our bumps. This time: in a ring!

We all lined up. The group’s excitement was palpable. I stepped up onto the ring apron and threw my leg over the middle rope, envisioning myself as a long-legged Stacy Keibler. As I crotched myself on the second rope, I realized that probably wasn’t the entrance for me.

Making my way to the center of the ring, flabbergasted I was here, I savored every footstep. It wasn’t the crash pad I imagined it would be. While there was some amount of cushion under my feet and a spring in each step, it was by no means a soft landing. I took my first bump. The sound of my once-waiflike slaps had turned into slightly less waiflike-sounding slaps against the plywood and steel supporting my weight. This was fucking cool.

I exited the ring high on life, awaiting our next line of instructions.

Paul and Fergal demonstrated running the ropes. Being scared of looking funny when I ran was a large component in me failing PE. But this was different. This was in a wrestling ring. There was no amount of silly I wouldn’t look for this thing. Even if it meant something like, I don’t know, doing an embarrassing awkward Irish jig on my TV debut that would live on forever. I’m kidding; I would never sink that low.

“Three big steps, that’s all it should take to clear the ring, pivot, back flat against the top rope, grip it with your right arm, big step out,” Paul instructed.

Easy peasy. I got back in the ring, going over the bottom rope this time. Three big steps, I told myself.

I gripped the top rope with my right arm. Already off to a good start. Then came the footwork. I was more like a baby deer than a stealthy gazelle. I would take two to three steps to everyone else’s one step. And pivoting was much easier said than done. I stumbled, tripped up over my own feet, and damn near fell flat on my face. What a rush!

One thing you may not have heard is the day after you’ve run ropes for the first time you get bruises all over your back and arms. No one is immune to this. Add in taking a few turnbuckles too and you look like a beaten-up peach.

At home, I forgot to hide this from my mother and sauntered downstairs in a string top.

“How did you get those marks on your back?” she asked.

“Emmm, well, ehhhhhh…”

I couldn’t think of a lie quick enough, so I had to defer to the goddamn inconvenient, about-to-get-my-ass-in-trouble truth. I hadn’t actually been practicing Brazilian jiu-jitsu as I told her weeks ago to explain my absence for four hours every Sunday. I was learning to be a wrassler.

There was an all-out war in Bayside that night. My mom thought wrestling was the lowest form of class in entertainment. Considering she couldn’t even stomach watching it, there was no chance she could stomach her kids doing it. I should be more specific and say she couldn’t stomach me doing it. In her defense, at the time it wasn’t the most savory of sports to imagine your daughter getting into. The women were mostly treated like side pieces or sex objects. They weren’t seen as the athletes and storytellers that we are today.

She didn’t see the art that I did. She saw the bra and panties matches and mud-wrestling bouts that I vowed I would never participate in. Not that anyone would want to be looking at me getting rowdy in a pair of knickers anyway. There was nothing I could point to and show her: “That is what I want to do.” Because, frankly, it didn’t exist yet.

After a wailing and gnashing of teeth at each other, with me calling her a snob and her calling me underhanded and sneaky, we were able to meet at an appropriate talking volume.

“You lied to me.”

“You wouldn’t have let me do it.”

“Is this what you want to be doing with your life?”

“It’s not my career choice, Mom. I’m still going to college. I’m going to be a lawyer. I just love this. It’s helping me get fit. I get along with everyone and it’s keeping me focused.”

“You could break your neck.”

“I could do that with anything I chose to do. I could get hit by a car in the morning; that’s no reason not to do something. We train so we can do it safely.”

Wrestling had made me more focused and disciplined. It gave me goals and something to work towards. There’s a saying that goes “How you do one thing is how you do everything,” and that rang true here. I started doing better in school and eating better (or at least what I thought was better). Between wrestling, workouts, and studying harder, I had stopped partying with my friends. There was no more going out on weekends. I wanted to be fresh for wrestling on Sundays.

But of course it wasn’t entirely without incident either.

The moves were getting more complicated and I was having a hard time picking them up. Luckily, with my growing comfort among the boys, I had no problem going again and again, trying to get it right. It didn’t even dawn on me that I would be holding up the rest of the class. I just wanted to get better.

My brother was picking everything up effortlessly and had finally accepted that I wasn’t going to quit.

Richy being so good came in handy, as did his natural ability to teach just about anything. Meaning he could spend time coaching me in our back garden as I attempted to drill various techniques.

My favorite move was a pinning maneuver, and the closest thing to high flying that we had learned so far. It was a crucifix into a sunset flip. You would duck under someone’s arm when they were trying to hit you with a “clothesline,” wrap both of your arms around their shoulder, and kick your legs so they would wrap around their other arm so it looks like a crucifix. With your legs secured, you would release your arms and drop your head between their legs, forcing them to fall backwards and allowing you to pin them. I must have practiced it over a hundred times in our back garden, eager to show off my improvement in class.

Sunday came and at the end of class I was paired up with someone new for practice matches. I wanted to finish with my new, super, high-flying finishing move. He threw a clothesline, I ducked, hooked a most beautiful crucifix, released my arms, and was heading down south to complete my pin.

Crack.

He didn’t wait for me to tuck my head and sat straight on my head.

Oh no. This wasn’t good. I sat down on the benches along the wall clutching my neck. I could still feel all my extremities, could still walk. I might make it. But I would probably have to get it checked out, only I couldn’t tell my mom. She had literally just told me, “You could break your neck.”

Last thing you ever want to do is affirm your parents’ perfectly rational fears.

Luckily for me, my dad wasn’t much of an alarmist, so the next day he picked me up and brought me to see one of his friends from the pub who was a sports doctor.

We entered the front door of a regular semidetached house in walking proximity to my dad’s local pub. The front room had been converted to an office, with various certificates lining the wall, affirming the legitimacy of my dad’s friend, even though I’m pretty sure he had just consumed a couple of pints at the local establishment.

After running a series of tests on me, he came to a diagnosis and said, “A stinger. Lots of rugby players get them. Basically, your vertebrae have been compressed. Would you consider rugby instead?”

Crisis averted, my wrestling training would continue—and I was ready to take it to the next level.