Prairie Schooner

My feet.  All I felt right now was the pain in my feet.  My mind was centered on it.  For the last two hours, I had been running up a steep clay and gravel road with no shade from the relentless sun.  Now, I was on the other side of the mountain, and my thighs wobbled as I ran down a field of flat gray boulders.  I looked at the ground in front of me and followed the white chalk arrows.  There was no one else in sight.  My feet felt like they were swollen to twice their normal size and throbbed in agony.  The pain from the giant blister on my right heel had settled into a dull ache.  It registered in the back of my brain along with the other aches in my legs and my hips that, together, comprised the symphony of aches accompanying the loud, screaming pain of my feet. 

A man in an overly sheer white shirt grabbing a woman by the waist and flinging her into the air would not normally be my idea of a good time, especially when both man and woman have razor blades sticking out of their shoes. Yet as a teenager, watching a pairs figure skating team pull off a successful throw jump was one of my favorite things about the Winter Olympics, even if I had no idea it was called a throw jump.

I assumed every couple on ice was secretly a little bit in love with each other, even if they didn’t want to admit it. I was very sad when I found out that some of those couples skating together were actually brother and sister.

Most high school athletes keep old uniforms, trophies, and photographs, things that can be stored in boxes, left in basements. When equestrians stop showing, we’re left with a horse. Like my 17-year-old, roan-spotted Appaloosa mare, Willow. And the velvet helmet I got for my 13^th birthday, the Ariat tall boots that pinched the back of my knees, the fake white tail from our trip to Tennessee for a regional show. I still have the board fee, vet bill, farrier fee, the price of grain and hay.

I’ve graduated from horse girl to horsewoman. I quit the hunter jumper circuit for a lot of reasons, though injury makes the top of the list. I tore the tendons in my right foot just before the equestrian team try-outs at Auburn University, then Willow foundered, damaging her front two hooves. Years later, after we’d both rehabilitated, I found I didn’t have the time or money to show as a young adult.

After yesterday's piece on the noble sport of dodgeball we decided to follow it up with a duo of posts on another modern sport that artfully blends aggression and performance, professional wrestling. Below is Michael Chin's poetic recollection of his childhood memories of Hulk Hogan in light of the Hulkster's recent sex tape controversey. Click here for Francisco Delgado's meditation the experience of being a fan of The Rock before white kids started wearing his T-shirts.

I heard there was a Hulk Hogan sex tape. That he sleeps with his friend’s wife, and it may or may not have been his friend filming.

I heard Hulk knew he was on tape.

I heard that he didn’t.

I heard he was angry.