"What am I doing?"

I wrestled in the Greco Tournament this past Friday Night in the Chehalis Triple Crown, where they wrestle Greco on Friday night, Freestyle on Saturday and Folkstyle on Sunday. This year it was a monster tournament with wrestlers from Oregon, Idaho, Washington and Alaska. We wrestled on 14 mats spread out in the main gym, upper gym, cafeteria and wrestling room. It was a nightmare trying to keep track of wrestlers and when and where they were wrestling. I have wrestled in this tournament on a number of occasions (mostly with Shea), but as the years have passed I have wondered to myself, "What am I doing?" It was late in the evening, the crowd had thinned and the only wrestlers still in the gym were wrestlers who were competing for medals. I was on the side of the mat lacing up my shoes and trying to stretch and warm up muscles and ligaments that felt more like dried out gelfite fish than living tissue when a little smart-alecky, young wrestler with dyed red hair asked with a look of total bewilderment on his face,

"What are you doing?"

"What do you mean what am I doing? I'm trying to warm up. What are you doing?"

He replied, "I'm wrestling, but what are you doing?"

"Indeed," I smiled and thought to myself.

As I continued to warm up, he persisted,"Can people who are...um...well...like you, can they still wrestle?"

"You mean can old, fat guys still wrestle?"

"Well, I didn't say old and fat. But you know, can guys like you still wrestle?"

As I reflected on how badly I had wrestled in my last match, I had to agree, his question was entirely legit.

I responded, "Not really."

"Then what are you doing?" Another excellent question. However, I was getting ticked. Couldn't this punk kid see that I was trying to get in the zone mentally and that he was messing with my mojo, so I just replied, "OK little man, why are you wrestling?"

He confidently crowed, "I'm here to win!"

"Well then that makes two of us," I replied. I then went out on the mat and beat up a young wrestler who was maybe a year out of high school and had never wrestled Greco. Did I feel bad? Heck no!

Later in the night (close to midnight), as I was getting "ash canned" in the finals by a very young, and very athletic coach from the Westside of the state, that most excellent question kept bouncing around in my head, "What AM I doing?"