Several years ago, it came as quite a shock when I realized that my students were now too young to remember what happened in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999. I fear the day when my students enter my room unable to remember what happened in NYC, a field in Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001.
Sure, the kids know that something happened at Columbine that spring day, but they don't remember the lessons learned, nor do they remember the pain and heartache felt by the entire nation.
We must do all we can to continue to commemorate the mass loss of human life on September 11. Knowing that the lives of thousands of men and women of all faiths, nationalities, and cultures had been stripped from them by Islamic radicals, we cannot forget the lessons we learned that day. It is sinful for any one of us to fail to pass on what we learned. Remember the pain and fear that drove us to rise above our petty quarrels and disagreements? Remember the anger that ironically helped us realize our love for one another and brought us together in brother- and sisterhood?
This morning, Alan Jackson's "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" came on the radio. Whenever I hear this song, I always listen to it, and oftentimes I sing along. This morning, Alan Jackson's song left me speechless, unable to utter the words even in a whisper. This morning, it brought tears to my eyes.
I pray that we never have to endure another mass attack on American soil or another act of terrorism with such incredible loss of life. Those who don't pray, what do they do? I pray that down the road, my son Brody never becomes used to these events. Hopefully, when he's old enough, he'll only be able to ask me if I remembered where I was during just a few of these calamities.
I was sitting in my 9th grade Economics class in Mr. Hedberg's room when I heard about the Oklahoma City bombing. I was sitting in the television room at the SigEp house after class my freshman year in college when I heard about the Columbine shootings. I was getting ready for an early morning education class my senior year when Scott Hughes told me about the attacks on the World Trade Center.
I don't want to have to remember where I was or what I was doing on any other calamitous days. I pray for peace, for the strength and wisdom to do what I can in the name of God. I pray for an end to the ridiculousness that leads us to such horrors. What do you pray for? And for those of you who don't pray, where will you find your hope, strength, and wisdom?
I trust in God to protect His children, not just in this great nation, but all of His children. May God bless you all, especially on this remarkable day, and me He bring us all hope.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
Heat
Invariably, the word heat brings to mind a feeling of exhaustion and hunger. It takes me to a time in my life when, to people on the outside, I appeared to be slightly insane because of the torture I would put my body through.
I go back to one of those nights I spent sitting in a sauna. My head hangs low, and I feel the warmth emanating directly from my sweaty head. Beads of sweat gather and amass on my face until they give in to gravity, falling from the points of my face -- my cheek bones, the tip of my nose, my upper lip, my chin, the crowns of my eyes -- until they hit the ground. I used to think that I could count the pounds as they fell away, drop by drop. Rivers of sweat pour from my body, running swiftly and ceaselessly down the course of my skin.
Not a stitch of clothing remains dry, of course, but that’s the point. It’s like taking a fully saturated wash rag and wringing it out. No, not just one harsh wringing; rather, after you wring it once, you turn it around and wring it the other way. You do this four or five times until you think you’ve wrenched all the fluids out of it as you can. The washrag is dry enough now, and everything is fine, right? No one considers the rag itself, how each wringing motion tears at its very fibers. The sturdiest of cloths can withstand only so much battering, and the human body is no different.
For most of my senior high school wrestling season, I forced myself to sit in a sauna. At first, it was just a way to relax and calm down after a hard workout. Then it became something easy, a simple way to sweat because all I had to do was to sit there. I didn’t need to use up the few ounces of energy I had kept stored in my body; I could lose weight without working my body into complete exhaustion. So then, the saunas were just a new addition to the workout. Then it became a large portion of the workout. At first I simply sat in just my shorts, but then I began wearing layers. Before, the rivers of sweat flowed as freely as any river. They were open to the air and my body withstood this treatment. Once I put on the sweat suits and plastic conditioning suits, however, I never considered that my body was in danger of shutting down.
That year, three collegiate athletes had died due to dehydration and exhaustion from cutting weight. It was no wonder that my mother seemed to be so nervous when I would come home from practice and skip dinner. No wonder she gave me those alarmed looks on days before meets because my eyes were sunken in, surrounded by dark circles, my cheeks drawn tight. No wonder my strength and conditioning teacher commented on my dropping strength and how my maximum lifts had gone down since the semester’s beginning. No wonder my teammates commented on my skinniness and the protruding ribs in my side, the ominous dearth of body fat. How much more could I have taken?
Just think about it, the eerie addiction I had stumbled upon, the addiction to draining my body, of wringing myself dry. What would be the next step from this gateway? Would I lend myself to taking diuretics and laxatives to make weight, or would I try other means of purging my body? The odd thing was that I wasn’t doing this for body image. I didn’t look in the mirror and see fat where none existed, nor did I obsess over how tightly my clothes fit.
Before I knew it, however, the torture had come to an end. The heat was no longer a necessary evil, and when the need for the saunas had gone, so did the forced starvation and the purging of fluids. And so today it’s not easy for me to step back into a sauna. It takes me back to a time of confusion, of pain and misery. The hunger and exhaustion are gone but their memory hangs like a shadow. The shadow whispers with the flowing breeze, reminding me of lost goals, near misses, heartbreak, and long-gone friendships.
I can vividly recall the whispers of boys sitting in the back seats of buses, talking about girls and parties, our appointed freshman lookout watching for the coach to come back and to talk to us. It was always a good idea to have this rookie waiting at his post to warn the various rebels to spit out their chewing tobacco or to use fewer swear words (at least use them in quieter tones).
I can also hear the sound of the low roar of a crowd cheering, the distinctive voices of Logan’s dad yelling “Move!” and Chris’s mom screeching “Go Bobby!” and her voice trailing off without losing much momentum. I hear Amy’s call of “Come on, get ‘em!” I hear the yelling of coaches when I made mistakes and their praises and clapping when I succeeded. I feel the cool chill of the coliseum floor, the tears running down my cheeks, being wiped away with the dreams of championships. I feel the heat of the passion of victory, the competition, and the glory.
When I allow my mind to truly wander unchecked, I can feel the hum of a different crowd cheering, not for me, but for the matches taking place on the coliseum floor, the matches in which I had dreamt so long to be a part of yet I had fallen so short. I go through it all again, sitting in the stands of the coliseum watching when I had worked so hard in hopes of making it to those final matches.
The very mention of saunas and heat brings me back to that cold day in February. I get to a point in my reminiscing where all I can envision of this day are the cold, dark gray slabs of concrete as I dropped to my knees. I hadn’t even bothered to grab my warm-ups after that last handshake. I was bent over into a little ball, sobbing hysterically, sweat mixing with tears and snot. A warm hand now rested on my naked shoulder. I wanted to lash out, to tell the owner of that hand to go the hell away. I wanted to kick and scream, but all I did was look up to see the friendly face of Coach Smith. The coaches knew better than to talk to me after that match, but for some reason, this one had broken ranks and was stepping into a dangerous zone. Yet, he quelled my anger with his words. I’d never before heard someone tell me anything like what he said next, and I didn’t think I’d ever hear it again. He told me I had nothing to cry for; there was no reason to be upset. Bullshit! I wanted to yell, but he went on. “When my son is in high school, I hope he’s exactly like you.” He stood up and walked away, leaving me to think about what he had said.
It became a question of what I had done it all for. Why had I spent all those hours training and cutting weight if I was going to end up falling short of my goal of a state championship? A young man looking failure in the eye will always question the point of it all when the real lessons learned and the memories gained will remain hidden in the back of his mind. Eventually, when all doors have been opened, all possible explanations exhausted, and the journey thoroughly examined and analyzed, the answers will be there, waiting as obvious and explicit as ever. The images will come together and they will make sense at last.
I always had been notorious for acting on the need to spend extra minutes on stairmaster in the weight room after practices. As I climbed, my hood pulled over head as I watched the sweat fall, I knew that the time was invaluable. Some nights my mom would walk into the practice room, wondering where I was at because she'd seen everyone else leave already. Later, Lance's dad, a custodian at Wynmore Fitness Club, began letting us use the gym while he cleaned the facility. I tried engaging in aerobic workouts on the various machines, but eventually I found myself turning to the sauna to lose the weight.
My senior season has now become a haze in my mind, but several vivid memories do stand out. During the season, Lance, Chris, and I would eat very little at lunch. We preferred sitting in the locker room or the wrestling room to eat our meager meals rather than enduring the excess of the cafeteria. We would spend our Friday nights together to avoid parties or other social gatherings that presented countless temptations. After meets on Saturdays, we would sit together at a booth in fast food joints like Hardees or Taco Bell, and I would binge on greasy food and chug pop even though I knew I was not supposed to indulge like that. Even though I was spending my time with my brothers, I knew that the more illicit indulgences I took, I would need to spend more time in the heat.
It's the feeling of inhaling a dry heat that takes me back to the hot air of the sauna. I remember the loss, the pain, and the anguish, but I also remember the road to it. I cannot look back on those times and relate them solely to the self-imposed torture of cutting weight in saunas, however. Through all the hours spent training, conditioning, and wrenching off the extra pounds, the best metaphor I can think of to describe the lessons of wrestling as the bus ride going to or from a meet: the air blasting from the bus heater, the uncomfortable seats, the anxiety and the exhilaration, the bumps along the way, and the bonds formed at the back of the bus.
Whereas the word heat triggers these memories and refreshes me of the pain and agony of the journey, of the exhaustion and hunger, and of the insanity and torture, I don't really look at my wrestling experience through such a narrow scope. Cutting weight in a sauna had always been a solitary and stationary experience, one that makes a person all the lesser. Falling short of one's dreams is only forgivable if that person knows that he'd done everything he could to give it his best shot. I know this now, and I shall always remember that none of it had been in vain, and I shall always remember the fraternity and education permanently forged by the sport of wrestling.
I go back to one of those nights I spent sitting in a sauna. My head hangs low, and I feel the warmth emanating directly from my sweaty head. Beads of sweat gather and amass on my face until they give in to gravity, falling from the points of my face -- my cheek bones, the tip of my nose, my upper lip, my chin, the crowns of my eyes -- until they hit the ground. I used to think that I could count the pounds as they fell away, drop by drop. Rivers of sweat pour from my body, running swiftly and ceaselessly down the course of my skin.
Not a stitch of clothing remains dry, of course, but that’s the point. It’s like taking a fully saturated wash rag and wringing it out. No, not just one harsh wringing; rather, after you wring it once, you turn it around and wring it the other way. You do this four or five times until you think you’ve wrenched all the fluids out of it as you can. The washrag is dry enough now, and everything is fine, right? No one considers the rag itself, how each wringing motion tears at its very fibers. The sturdiest of cloths can withstand only so much battering, and the human body is no different.
For most of my senior high school wrestling season, I forced myself to sit in a sauna. At first, it was just a way to relax and calm down after a hard workout. Then it became something easy, a simple way to sweat because all I had to do was to sit there. I didn’t need to use up the few ounces of energy I had kept stored in my body; I could lose weight without working my body into complete exhaustion. So then, the saunas were just a new addition to the workout. Then it became a large portion of the workout. At first I simply sat in just my shorts, but then I began wearing layers. Before, the rivers of sweat flowed as freely as any river. They were open to the air and my body withstood this treatment. Once I put on the sweat suits and plastic conditioning suits, however, I never considered that my body was in danger of shutting down.
That year, three collegiate athletes had died due to dehydration and exhaustion from cutting weight. It was no wonder that my mother seemed to be so nervous when I would come home from practice and skip dinner. No wonder she gave me those alarmed looks on days before meets because my eyes were sunken in, surrounded by dark circles, my cheeks drawn tight. No wonder my strength and conditioning teacher commented on my dropping strength and how my maximum lifts had gone down since the semester’s beginning. No wonder my teammates commented on my skinniness and the protruding ribs in my side, the ominous dearth of body fat. How much more could I have taken?
Just think about it, the eerie addiction I had stumbled upon, the addiction to draining my body, of wringing myself dry. What would be the next step from this gateway? Would I lend myself to taking diuretics and laxatives to make weight, or would I try other means of purging my body? The odd thing was that I wasn’t doing this for body image. I didn’t look in the mirror and see fat where none existed, nor did I obsess over how tightly my clothes fit.
Before I knew it, however, the torture had come to an end. The heat was no longer a necessary evil, and when the need for the saunas had gone, so did the forced starvation and the purging of fluids. And so today it’s not easy for me to step back into a sauna. It takes me back to a time of confusion, of pain and misery. The hunger and exhaustion are gone but their memory hangs like a shadow. The shadow whispers with the flowing breeze, reminding me of lost goals, near misses, heartbreak, and long-gone friendships.
I can vividly recall the whispers of boys sitting in the back seats of buses, talking about girls and parties, our appointed freshman lookout watching for the coach to come back and to talk to us. It was always a good idea to have this rookie waiting at his post to warn the various rebels to spit out their chewing tobacco or to use fewer swear words (at least use them in quieter tones).
I can also hear the sound of the low roar of a crowd cheering, the distinctive voices of Logan’s dad yelling “Move!” and Chris’s mom screeching “Go Bobby!” and her voice trailing off without losing much momentum. I hear Amy’s call of “Come on, get ‘em!” I hear the yelling of coaches when I made mistakes and their praises and clapping when I succeeded. I feel the cool chill of the coliseum floor, the tears running down my cheeks, being wiped away with the dreams of championships. I feel the heat of the passion of victory, the competition, and the glory.
When I allow my mind to truly wander unchecked, I can feel the hum of a different crowd cheering, not for me, but for the matches taking place on the coliseum floor, the matches in which I had dreamt so long to be a part of yet I had fallen so short. I go through it all again, sitting in the stands of the coliseum watching when I had worked so hard in hopes of making it to those final matches.
The very mention of saunas and heat brings me back to that cold day in February. I get to a point in my reminiscing where all I can envision of this day are the cold, dark gray slabs of concrete as I dropped to my knees. I hadn’t even bothered to grab my warm-ups after that last handshake. I was bent over into a little ball, sobbing hysterically, sweat mixing with tears and snot. A warm hand now rested on my naked shoulder. I wanted to lash out, to tell the owner of that hand to go the hell away. I wanted to kick and scream, but all I did was look up to see the friendly face of Coach Smith. The coaches knew better than to talk to me after that match, but for some reason, this one had broken ranks and was stepping into a dangerous zone. Yet, he quelled my anger with his words. I’d never before heard someone tell me anything like what he said next, and I didn’t think I’d ever hear it again. He told me I had nothing to cry for; there was no reason to be upset. Bullshit! I wanted to yell, but he went on. “When my son is in high school, I hope he’s exactly like you.” He stood up and walked away, leaving me to think about what he had said.
It became a question of what I had done it all for. Why had I spent all those hours training and cutting weight if I was going to end up falling short of my goal of a state championship? A young man looking failure in the eye will always question the point of it all when the real lessons learned and the memories gained will remain hidden in the back of his mind. Eventually, when all doors have been opened, all possible explanations exhausted, and the journey thoroughly examined and analyzed, the answers will be there, waiting as obvious and explicit as ever. The images will come together and they will make sense at last.
I always had been notorious for acting on the need to spend extra minutes on stairmaster in the weight room after practices. As I climbed, my hood pulled over head as I watched the sweat fall, I knew that the time was invaluable. Some nights my mom would walk into the practice room, wondering where I was at because she'd seen everyone else leave already. Later, Lance's dad, a custodian at Wynmore Fitness Club, began letting us use the gym while he cleaned the facility. I tried engaging in aerobic workouts on the various machines, but eventually I found myself turning to the sauna to lose the weight.
My senior season has now become a haze in my mind, but several vivid memories do stand out. During the season, Lance, Chris, and I would eat very little at lunch. We preferred sitting in the locker room or the wrestling room to eat our meager meals rather than enduring the excess of the cafeteria. We would spend our Friday nights together to avoid parties or other social gatherings that presented countless temptations. After meets on Saturdays, we would sit together at a booth in fast food joints like Hardees or Taco Bell, and I would binge on greasy food and chug pop even though I knew I was not supposed to indulge like that. Even though I was spending my time with my brothers, I knew that the more illicit indulgences I took, I would need to spend more time in the heat.
It's the feeling of inhaling a dry heat that takes me back to the hot air of the sauna. I remember the loss, the pain, and the anguish, but I also remember the road to it. I cannot look back on those times and relate them solely to the self-imposed torture of cutting weight in saunas, however. Through all the hours spent training, conditioning, and wrenching off the extra pounds, the best metaphor I can think of to describe the lessons of wrestling as the bus ride going to or from a meet: the air blasting from the bus heater, the uncomfortable seats, the anxiety and the exhilaration, the bumps along the way, and the bonds formed at the back of the bus.
Whereas the word heat triggers these memories and refreshes me of the pain and agony of the journey, of the exhaustion and hunger, and of the insanity and torture, I don't really look at my wrestling experience through such a narrow scope. Cutting weight in a sauna had always been a solitary and stationary experience, one that makes a person all the lesser. Falling short of one's dreams is only forgivable if that person knows that he'd done everything he could to give it his best shot. I know this now, and I shall always remember that none of it had been in vain, and I shall always remember the fraternity and education permanently forged by the sport of wrestling.
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