2004-03-14 - 2:40 p.m.
WEEK #8: STILL NOTHING
So! I still don't have much of anything to talk about. I'm meaning to talk about my wedding and all that business one of these days. But not now.
Say, today is WrestleMania day! I bet you didn't know that. It's the 20th one. 20, that's a lot of WrestleManias. I think I'm gonna watch it.
I've watched wrestling regularly since I was a mere youngster, but I pretty much stopped watching almost exactly a year ago due to some unfortunate family circumstances. About a month went by before life was normal enough that I even thought about how I'd been missing things, and by then it (and a lot of stuff) didn't seem as important anymore.
I used to go into work every Monday and Thursday night, and one Sunday a month, even if I wasn't working so that I could watch wrestling with the guys. But to think about that now, it seems stupid when I can spend that time at home. Work in general seems stupid for the same reason, but I gotta have some money.
Not that I couldn't watch it at home, cause Charity tolerates it. Some stuff she even likes watching. But overall I know she doesn't want to. Our taste in TV is quite different. To wit, I love the show 24, but she recently summed up Kiefer Sutherland's badass character thusly: "he just yells a lot and shoots people". I know! That's what's awesome! But she's a girl, what can you do.
I still pay attention to the goings-ons in wrestling, and I've seen some stuff over the past year through the miracle of video tape. When we came back to school in January I thought I might start watching again, but we'll be gone for a few months this summer for our honeymoon and I'd just have to stop and start again. I’m lazy like that.
The first WrestleMania I ever saw was #8 in 1992. Oh man, I was so pumped. It was the first wrestling PPV that my local cable company ever offered. We were pretty slow in getting PPV, and even then our PPV access was only on a show-by-show basis. They didn't offer that year's SummerSlam, but we got Survivor Series in the Fall. Then after that I think we got all the big wrestling shows regularly.
WrestleMania 8 was pretty different than the ones of the modern era. It started in the afternoon, like 3 o'clock or so. There was an intermission in the middle of it. It was like this truly epic event and I got to take part in it.
I remember my parents even got me McDonalds for dinner that night, which rarely ever happened in my family except for incredibly rare occasions like a good report card or something. It never happens in my own family now either since Charity is so health-conscious, but that wasn't why my parents didn't do it. They were just cheap. But the cheeseburgers and fries definitely added to the experience. WrestleMania 8 is still my favorite of all the WrestleManias.
I don't remember much about #9. WrestleMania 10 happened the week that my grandfather died. He'd been sick for a while, it wasn't unexpected or anything. But it still sucked. I think he died on the Wednesday before, and the funeral was either Saturday or Sunday morning before the show. I ended up watching it in my room alone, and my mom and one of my aunts were downstairs. My dad and his brothers were off doing something. #10 is a pretty good show but I wasn't terribly into it at the time for obvious reasons.
#11 brings back no memories. I had to watch 12 downstairs with my parents for some reason. This was right after my dad bought a descrambler box to get us PPV for free, and I guess they didn't want me to take it to my room and blow off WrestleMania so I could watch the nudie channel for a few hours, who knows.
This was right around the time that I didn't feel comfortable watching it with my parents anymore, since the product was starting to get a little more grown up with Sunny distracting people with her shapely bottom and Goldust stripping down to his lingerie and all whatnot. I was growing up right along with it and I was hip to the changes, but don't get my Mom started. Don't EVEN get her started. A year or so later I got a Sable/Sunny swimsuit issue of Raw Magazine in the mail and she about hit the fan. She told me she was going to hide it and cancel my subscription until my dad told her to shut up and give it to me.
#13 I don't remember anything about either. It's strange that the odd numbered ones spark no memory, but the even ones do. WrestleMania 14 was a bizarre occasion. About a half hour before the show, my entire block lost power and it stayed that way for hours. I missed the live show and, since she couldn't cook or anything, my Mom and I went to get McDonalds for dinner. It was probably the first time she'd paid for it since WrestleMania 8.
She didn't want to actually go in there to eat, though. God forbid someone would see her. So we ate in the parking lot of the hospital near our house, parked under a street light so we could see. Then we went home and waited in the dark. The real sucky part was that I had to go back to school the next day after being off a week for Spring Break, and spending the night in the dark was hardly how I wanted to unwind before going back to the grind.
Finally, just as the show was ending, the power came back on. I stayed up and watched the replay, which kept me up past midnight. Then I had to go back to school the next morning on 5-6 hours sleep. Yahoo.
#15 I don't remember at all. That was during the end of my senior year of high school, and everything around then seems like a blur. WrestleMania 16, which was actually called WrestleMania 2000, had this thing called "WrestleMania All Day Long" that started in the morning and ran until the show started. It recapped all the other WrestleManias. I came home from college that weekend and watched it at home.
An incredible switch happens the next year, as I remember the odd numbered show but not the even one after it. WrestleMania 17 in 2001 was just a few weeks after Spring Break, which was the first time I'd seen Charity in over a year. The night before the show I talked with her on the phone and she told me she was going to transfer and come to school here in the fall. I was totally excited.
Then the next morning, for reasons I don't entirely recall and which are probably too stupid to explain, I had to go driving to find this wildlife ranch somewhere out in the sticks. When you get out of the cities, though, a lot of the land really is neat to see with the rolling hills and the trees and everything.
And I just remember driving down this stretch of road where it was like I could see for miles in any direction, and I still had this really happy feeling about Charity. I still wasn't smart enough to realize WHY I felt like that, but I knew I was really excited that she'd be around. The whole thing really has nothing to do with WrestleMania, but even today when I realized that it was WrestleMania Day, that moment is what I thought of.
#18 I don't remember. #19 was last year, which I didn't see live due to the aforementioned family issues. But I did see a tape a day or two later. And now tonight comes #20. I hope it's good! I'll let you know tomorrow.
*hug*
