Thursday, July 22, 2010Opinion

The Brownsville States-Graphic

page A4

By 28th Judicial District Circuit Court Judge Clayburn Peeples

In Country

Calvin's Corner

By Calvin Carter, Staff Writer

My wife and I went to visit her brother last weekend. He’s a soldier, on his way to Afghanistan as I write this. He’ll probably be in country by the time you read it.

He’s no stranger to hardship duty. In the last ten years he has done tours in Korea, Kuwait, Iraq twice and now Afghanistan.

You don’t have to tell people how difficult the professions of arms are, how dangerous it is living so much of your life in harm’s way, but we don’t often stop and think of the collateral damage done to the families of military personnel. Watching him with his family over the weekend was a poignant reminder of just how costly such sacrifice is.

He and his wife have five children, from nine on down. The youngest, twin girls, are ten months old. They were crawling everywhere, getting ready to take their first steps in the next couple of months. He won’t see them, of course; he’ll hear about them.

He’s an engineer by education, my brother-in-law is, and not just an ordinary one. He has a PhD in metallurgical engineering. Not just a bachelor’s degree, or a masters, but a genuine, earned doctorate.

Unemployment will never be an issue for him. He gets job offers and inquiries from the world beyond the army on a regular basis. Private industry desperately needs people with his background, training and education.

But so does the Army. So that’s where he is, doing what he has dreamed of doing ever since he was in the first grade, protecting his country.

When he’s not in uniform, he’s just a regular guy, just like the rest of us. We talked Saturday night about a western vacation our families are thinking of taking together next summer, subject, of course, to the needs of the army.

When he is at home, he does the “dad” things other fathers do. He’s a Cub Scout leader for his son’s troop. He coached his daughter’s T-ball team. He changes diapers and washes dishes and helps with the housework; he’s a thoroughly modern man in the best sense of the term.

At some point Saturday evening he and I decided to make a frozen custard run. A few minutes later we were at a local franchise standing at the counter ordering “concretes.” As we did, the manager, who had been cooking French fries, looked up and

walked over to us. “Are you in the military?” he asked my brother-in-law.

“Yes,” Ryan answered, surprised. “The Army.”

“I thought so,” the manager said. “Where you stationed?”

“I’m on my way to Afghanistan next week.”

Turning to the clerk, the manager said, “Give him a discount.” Then turning back to Ryan, he said, “ when you get back, come by; I’ll buy you a sundae.”

Needless to say, the two of us went away feeling awfully good about that encounter. The manager’s action’s spoke louder than any praise or thank you he might have uttered. Everybody seems to do that these days, and that’s great, but I sometimes wonder about all the business and political expressions of gratitude that are so common today. I’m not questioning anyone’s sincerity, I just wonder.

We talk a great game of military support these days. We wave flags and say the right things. Politicians, if they don’t have military service of their own (and few do) brag about their uncle who served in Vietnam or their grandfather who marched off to World War II. We claim to be patriotic now, but I sometimes wonder if we’re not, as they say in Texas, “more hat than cattle” when it comes to truly appreciating our military personnel.

Here’s something interesting; going all the way back to the election of 1992, every presidential election has pitted a candidate who was a genuine war hero, or at least a bona fide

military veteran, against an opponent whose military service was either questionable or nonexistent.

Both John Kerry and Al Gore served in Vietnam. Kerry was awarded three Purple Hearts for wounds he received there. Bob Dole was severely wounded and permanently maimed in World War II, and George H. W. Bush was shot out of the sky over the Pacific in the same conflict. John McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam who chose torture over the dishonor of criticizing the United States.

They all lost the presidency to opponents whose military service was either nonexistent or questionable, to say the most.

You would think a generation of Americans who find themselves to be in an almost constant state of war with someone or other for the last 20 years would look for leaders who knew something about how to fight that they didn’t learn from a publicity tour of an army post or watching MSNBC.

But that’s not the way we operate in America today. Today when we speak of military heroes we seem to still think first of the generation that fought and won World War II for us, and they deserve every bit of the honor we can bestow on them.

But the young men, and women, who wear this country’s uniform today are giving them a run for their money, it seems to me.

God bless them one and all.

Pro wrestling or wrasslin’ as it’s dubbed here in the south has always been a bold and unique combination of carefully planned, yet loose improvisational choreography, acting drama solely based to manipulate the audience’s emotions, and amazing and often times, dangerous physical feats.

It’s probably the only sport that’s debated on whether it really is a sport because its sole purpose is based on entertainment rather than competition. For instance, Charles Barkley would challenge Michael Jordan’s title for best NBA player with dunks and rebounds, not a cheap low blow while the refs remain momentarily distracted by Scottie Pippin’s accusations of foul play by Barkley. Barkley wouldn’t delve into an intricate back-story on how he ran over Jordan’s wife in a monster truck weeks prior to their game, just to psychologically mess with Jordan’s head, and emotionally bring the audience to anger. And as for the trash talk…well…okay not everything is different.

I’ve been watching pro wrasslin for just as long as I’ve been watching cartoons. Besides, playing video games and lifting weights together in my late teens, wrasslin was a great bonding tool for my dad and I.

So last Friday, as I found myself covering the T.I.W.F. benefit show for the Haywood County Rescue Squad in the Haywood County Parks and Recreation building, I was taken back to those Saturday mornings and Monday nights, watching my favorite wrestlers battling each other for gold belt glory.

Fact is I’ve learned quite a few things watching pro wrestling, some I would like to share with you in this column.

Yes, pain is pretty real

There has always been one fact that has flown through my mind throughout my whole life on wrestling. When I was six, to me pro wrestling was real, and when I say that, I mean every aspect.

A good guy (face) being horribly beat by the bad guy (heel), felt like a bagel knife to chest. Little did I know that nine times out of ten, the two were probably laughing away the night over a few beers at some bar? As a kid it all felt real. Every grimace, yell and twisted facial contortion from the painful throws, high flies, chairs and falls, made me wonder if this guy or girl was going to survive.

Skip six years later to when I turn 12. By then, through a combination of my own self-discovery of logic, and an almost Obi Wan Kenobi like guidance from my father, it becomes apparent that these violent battles are hazed by smoke and mirror. Words like “scripted” “melodramatic” and “ c h o r e o g r a p h e d ” entered my vocabulary.

And yet despite that, I still stick to the golden rule that in a way, it’s still all real. The various injuries are a great clue, the broken legs, arms and necks show that just because its scripted or choreographed, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t all hurt. It doesn’t mean that things can’t go wrong.

The infamous death of Owen Hart in a live pay-per-view event only further drives that point home.

And it’s a truth of life. In whatever you work at, whether physical or mental, pain is a constant.

Doing what you love requires sacrifice and risk

Mick Foley use to be a favorite of mine, mostly because throughout his long career, he’s managed to play characters that have stuck in my mind. Cactus Jack use to scare me as a kid, especially when he was beating up on Sting. Mankind was a great medium of psychotic comedy I could appreciate. Dude Love however, was too much off a gimmick for my tastes.

Foley was primarily a hardcore wrestler, meaning that most of his matches would involve different outside weapons and high risk moves. It was once said, that Foley tried to retire because his matches would scare his children. If I had to see my dad constantly beat to a bloody pulp every night, I’d be scared as well.

Foley’s retirement of course didn’t last that long after he announced it. On and off, he’s still been in matches on TV throughout the years.

I could be completely wrong, but to me he would still continue to risk his health to wrestle. The same could be said for a lot of wrestlers, especially in the underground scene, where stars of the night still have to hold downday jobs to make

ends meet. And one bad slip could mean major injury or worse.

Unless you’re making WWE or TNA money, this is a business that requires love for the job, and sacrifice. Heck, even if you do make it to the top, you’ve still got to contend with being on the road for most of the year.

The lesson I’ve applied is that to truly do what you love, it takes risk and sacrifice. It’s a realization of life I’ve carried with me for most of my life, often times as a way to keep me in spirits when one door in life slams in my face.

Your talents and skills can be used for good

Often whenever wrestling is discussed in a mainstream manner, it’s met with some type of initial resistance. It often comes in the form of beneath me level ridicule (you still watch that stuff? It’s fake, grow up), lop sided analyzation (It’s so violent and sexist) or unfortunate tragedy (His five-year-old sister is in the hospital because he tried to copy a move).

It’s rare that most people will admit its potential entertainment value, its call to for a moment, just imagine and let go. It’s even more rare when it’s being used for some type of benefit towards society. T.I.W.F. is great example of this, as their show for the Haywood County Rescue Squad shone a light onto their charitable nature, just in case their shows for other charitable events like Relay for Life wasn’t enough to clue you in on that fact.

The potential for good and evil, remarkable and tragic, is apparent in any and every action I suppose. And perhaps on this point, I still represent one side of the coin. But if the aim is to create good with your talent and skills, shouldn’t that at least count for something?

What I’ve learned from pro wrestling

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