The Oriole Wrestling Club

Intro/Chapter One

I sat there in the hospital room with the blue light of the TV keeping me from dosing back off to sleep. It's 10:45 am. It's the third period. So why am I not in the third period...

Why am I here? Where are my friends? My regular clothes on my back and not these

hospital scrubs. My food is on a lunch tray instead of a rack. Tenders and fries ...not whatever this

is ...

Listen ...I don't know who you are, and you don't know me...yet. If you wonder how I

got here, I'll tell you. Before I do, Let me tell you this....

Always stick to your shots....

This is my story...

CHAPTER ONE: BEGINNINGS

Today's the day. The first time I'll ever step into this room. The wrestling room. An indent in the hall. Despite it being my junior year, it's safe to stay, that I have zero social life. So I figured, What better way to make friends than to join a team sport. Granted, It was risky for me, seeing as My mom would be a pain in the ass about anything I did. She tells me the sport is nothing but a bunch of white boys.

"They're some big tuff white boys," my mom would say. No, maybe in the rural area, but not now. Apparently, she wasn't aware of the racial makeup of my school. Forty-eight point six of our school is non-white. So I had no "big tuff white boys" to fight.

Then I saw two of them walk in? He looked the same, only wearing sweats and an orange shirt while Ethan wheres a white one. Ethan had a twin! How did I not know this? Actually, there were plenty of siblings on the team.

Adolphus, this senior who wrestled at 170, is this petite but muscular guy. He was a little arrogant but in the right way, And his brother Rufus. Then there's Abraham, 196 lbs. Was this guy that was built for no reason. I was kinda scared cause I had never seen someone like that. I was convinced this man was a metahuman from a comic somewhere. However, the coach gave him the nickname "Ferdinand," like the Spanish bull. (despite having on almost every visible part of his body, he wouldn't hurt a fly or at least didn't want to). It wasn't until the season truly started that I saw what he was talking about. He was a beast on the mat. Oh, those days....

Week 1: The more, the merrier....especially in wrestling.

What's the term when you realize you're 210, 5ft—10 in. And about being paired up with the worst and most incompetent people, you'll ever meet? Pissed? Annoyed? Vexed? Any other fancy vocabulary words? Quite frankly, I felt that by the time I looked at my first practice match, I was ready to call it a season. I mean fuck Mike Winston. My god, he's pathetic. A stupid prick who could pass as a fat-ass African dude looks like a lumpy potato. It got annoying cause he didn't know what he was doing.

Kinda felt like they honestly hated me for that. When I got home from practice, mom asked me, "did you pin anyone? You get the pin," she would say. Of course, I would reply "yes" all the time.

My memories of being on the team are on the spectrum of "I can tell you everything" to

"I barely can remember." Sometimes in a sense, it seems like I miss a lot. I would not be joining and playing the side character if there was any regret.

Thursday 11/23: The doge Ball Day

Being on this team is the warm-up game—Coach David split us into two groups.

Randomly I hope, but it didn't matter. I was on the far side with a couple of the kids they dubbed "pubs," but they seemed acceptable to me. People like me, Mikey, Levi, Peter Jack, Jagger, and the rest were on the other side. This shouldn't be that bad, right? Oh boy, I was wrong. The minute Coach blew the whistle, it became a battlefield.