Anything but Lazy
I was on the phone with Ticketmaster. Fresh out of high school with no credit card and the opportunity of a lifetime. See, it was Friday, a week after tickets went on sale. My friend Derrick already had seats for all of us to WWF Summerslam. If I drove, he would trade me a seat without any further payment. Then a curious notion came to me, call the box office and see if they had better seats than him.
The lady gave the option of a single front-row ringside seat. The price was $300 at Raleigh’s RBC Center. I was two hours away and must purchase this immediately! Later I would be recognized as the guy sitting between the announcers. There’s a bunch of instances where I am on camera during the pay-per-view event. A nice bonus for a guy who wanted to feel the energy of the performance. I was asked who I killed for the seat, that’s how awesome it was.
My stepmother made this possible. She’d been married into the family for a couple years and was the only person home. My father later steamrolled me about giving her the money. Which I already had ready and she probably has no recollection of this simple gesture. A wonderful memory I will never be able to describe in a way you’d feel the justice. People in the last 20 years have described their fondness for watching that event.
The Rock coming down in the main event then, and the world’s biggest movie star now. A time when we have a pandemic. The personalities can’t ever be duplicated. I can’t show you a video and communicate the energy of 20 thousand people watching a man fall from the top of the set. The first-ever Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match happened that night and if you didn’t know what not to try at home, you did afterwards.
I have goosebumps through typing all of this. Somewhere lies an envelope of photos developed by CVS. I remember where I was standing in the living room when she let me hold her credit card to make that dream come true. I have no doubt she’d have done the same for her students. People who mean so much, their photos are on her family refrigerator at home.
She’s a since-retired Special Education teacher who always had stories of going into homes, accompanying students, and enhancing their lives where practical education draws lines. Her kindred spirit is wonderful.
I was getting in the truck with my father, in Welcome’s Food Lion parking lot, nearly 25 years ago. He told me he was ready to end the distance of dating her all the way in High Point. From there, he made himself happy and I was his best man.
Today, they have a storybook home in a small community. You wouldn’t think the Entertainment Weekly and level of gossip at family dinners would be fueling all those miles of push mowing a pasture on foot. I don’t know how she does it. Nor how my father keeps such a beautiful landscape. I think only a home of patience and love can have such blossoms.
My writing has become a way of saying Thank You from the heart. I hope her birthday is something wonderful. I refuse to name people in these sort of things… But I hope our secrets are appreciated. Even if you know, just enjoy it from the front like she made possible for me. My father and his wife would later come to my wrestling matches and cheer me on. You’ll never know what those things meant to a lost young man. Forever in your debt…
