In defense of stupid

Mae Young. Photo from Fox Sports.

Back in college, I used to spend my down time reading classics and researching artists. I blew through Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead in two days--just for fun.* I researched T.S. Eliot because I wanted to know more about him--just for fun. I read Moby Dick in a day and a half--just for fun. I read about Andy Warhol's screen-printing processes--just for fun.

Amy and I started watching wrestling in grad school. Olean, NY has a huge wrestling fan base. I think we started to watch it in part to have something to talk about with our coworkers at Tops and Ames.** We also started to watch it to poke fun of it. However, I found myself being sucked into the storylines and impressed with the wrestlers.

Edge and Christian are my favorite and my best.

When I started teaching full-time, I found that I couldn't come home from work and snuggle up with the work of Charles Baudelaire or pick apart the layers of symbolism in William Blake. You can say what you want about teachers--but I tell you, the job is mentally and emotionally exhausting. I wanted to be entertained by something I didn't have to think about--at all.

And this is truly when I got sucked into the world of the WWE.

Amy and I used to watch Monday Night RAW religiously. We used to speculate about the story lines, including the fact that we could probably write more cohesively than the WWE writers. We went to the live events in Rochester and Buffalo. It was great fun! At one point, I had even charted out a cross stitch chart of Christian. Somehow, I messed up the dimensions in the stitching software and my finished project was going be about 7 ft. tall and 4 ft. wide. It would have taken a few hundred skeins of thread to complete. I decided that it would have to be my life's work to do this project. I imagined myself finishing the project when I was, like, 70 and presenting it to the Orangeville, Ontario Town Hall as a memento of one of their greatest sons.

This was not the original pic I was going to stitch. But imagine this about 7 ft. tall. Truly epic stitching, I tell ya!

Of course, I never actually stitched it.

I did find when I watched wrestling regularly, I treated myself better. After during my first year of teaching, I weighed close to 300 lbs. I couldn't climb a flight of stairs without being winded. I started eating vegetarian and exercising and lost weight. Part of my motivation was because I was watching these people who had attractive bodies and I wanted to be attractive, too.

I dropped out of the wrestling fandom when I got married, as my husband couldn't stand the stuff. Not that I blame him--I do have a lot of problems with the WWE--they don't treat their workers very well; they exploit women; they reinforce hurtful stereotypes; Linda McMahon's run for office; etc.

Having said that, I sometimes become nostalgic for my WWE fandom days because it was fun. This is why I am sad about the passing of Mae Young, who was a pioneer of women who wrestled. I am in awe that she worked right up to the end of her life. She was strong and sassy. Although I don't want to be a wrestler, nor do I desire to watch WWE, I do admire Mae Young.

*After I emerged from my dorm room after shunning my friends for two days to read The Fountainhead, I told Amy that I never wanted to read another book again. I thought The Fountainhead was that awful.

**Remember Ames? When the Olean Ames was closing, I bought a pair of shoes there. Each shoe was a different size. Since then, I always check to make sure the shoes are the same size when I buy shoes.