The Birth of a Fan

“I got your leg!” bellows Chris, as he grapples with Brandon. Chris is missing his t-shirt and his pectoral muscles are beginning to develop. There is still no hair.

Sweat is flying off of them, plastering the walls and often times me. Brandon is younger, but not any less aggressive. His lips form into a tight, “Oh” as he concentrates. Chris just keeps a sneer on his face and his lips part slightly to show razor sharp teeth.

I stand back like an unwilling bystander. I don’t understand what they are doing, but Chris yells, “Ouch!” So, I know Brandon has the upper hand now.

With my Scooby-doo doll clinched closer to my chest to protect it from the evils around me, I trot across the room. The television is blaring and my eyes zone in on the hypnotic scene. People I don’t recognize are doing the same things my brothers are doing.

“Watch out Brett!” yells my brothers in unison, and then they flip over the edge of the bed and crash into the ground. A small ripple of force reverberates under my feet.

I transfix my eyes on the screen. even as my head continues to occasionally be showered with droplets of sweat. My brothers let out grunts and hollers behind me. I try to zone out the smack of sweaty skin on sweaty skin.

“Ah! Look at this, there goes The Undertaker!” says a speaker from the television. His voice doesn’t sound real to me. It is like when Urkel on Family Matters tries to talk outside of his nerdy voice and he has that deeper voice.

The name “The Undertaker” attaches to my brain. “The Undertaker?” I say, with my eyebrows bowing inward to my face, my eyes distant. “What’s ‘The Undertaker’”? I ask my brothers. Brandon has Chris in a headlock and Chris is attempting to get out of it. My question hangs in the air for a few minutes.

They continue their clash. So I repeat, “What’s ‘The Undertaker’”? This time, they hear me and they look over at me. A smirk spreads across their faces.

They shrug their shoulders and Chris says, “He’s a wrestler, you idiot.”

Wrestling, I thought. I like this.