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So I've been sitting here trying to write something for me and my best friends wrestling zine and it turned into me rambling and rambling about something I love very much and it took me to a very emotional place so I decided why not just post it to a blog.... this isn't edited, I barely even read over it.... a lot of it won't make sense but right now, it felt great to write it... it's also way to long to go into a zine.... forewarning , the grammar, punctuation and overall writing of it doesn't make sense and probably reads like an 8 year old wrote it but whatever it made me feel great just to sit down and type away so here is the first post of me typing whatever popped into my head

So it's weird to think about wrestling on a deep level that's more than just entertainment but I'm sitting here at 1am searching for memorabilia on Ebay and I feel such a strong connection to it that it's almost weird. Very few things have made me feel full in my life…. my wife first and foremost has made me the happiest person I've ever been but after that; hardcore and wrestling are a tied 2nd, maybe wrestling a little more but I don't know. As a kid with almost no friends wrestling was my best friend, I knew that every Monday night I'd have hours of wrestling to watch. As a kid we lived in Georgia and my father worked in NYC…. weird right? Well every Monday through Friday he would travel from GA to NYC and lived in a hotel so it was just me and my mom, sister and grandma at home…. again, I didn't have many friends… maybe one or two but they were whatever… wrestling was my Real True Friend and it always left me feeling like I was a part of something… I distinctly remember Monday nights in my house, my Grandma would make dinner and around 7:50 I'd start getting real jittery at the table and both my mother and grandma knew what was happening, I literally couldn't wait for Monday night raw and Nitro to be on.. It's as vivid in my mind as if it happened yesterday that I knew exactly what time I needed to run up to my room to watch and I'd asked to be excused and speed upstairs to start taping Nitro on my VCR… I'd always tape Nitro starting at 8 then at 9 I'd switch over to Raw, even as a kid I figured out how to tape one and watch the other at the same time. I was always a Raw kid, even during the Monday Night wars I was always on the WWE/F side… Nitro was ALWAYS the B rate show to me. So anyway, I'd watch the first hour of Nitro and at 9 I'd switch over to raw and for some reason I always related to that more. HBK was ALWAYS my favorite wrestler, literally idolized him as a kid… super kicking imaginary things around the house…. honestly, mostly it was Puddies (you know, the evil weird grey things on Power Rangers) yeah, I'd superkick ones around the house that didn't exist.   So anyway… Monday's used to be the worst day and the best day for me…. the worst day because my father would leave for the week and I'd cry and cry because I knew I'd miss him so much and he was so far away but then later that night when wrestling came on it seemed to make everything better. For those 5 hours ( 1st hour of nitro, 2 hours of raw then the last 2 hours of Nitro because I'd watch the 2 hours that I taped during Raw of Nitro immediately after raw on my VHS tape) would be completely okay. I forgot about everything that was bothering me as a kid… I suffer from OCD and paranoia and I can remember instances of it as early as kindergarden as far as counting things and other ticks in my brain but I always knew when wrestling was going to make me feel better. I don't know what it was but I just felt GREAT when I watched it. The larger than life characters, the emotion, the stories, the physicality and the realness ( listen i get it, it's got a pre determined outcome and i knew that was a kid) but it's still real to me damnit. As a 27 year old married, homeowner adult it's still as real to me now as it was when I was 10 years old. It made me feel a part of something bigger than I was, bigger than my world, bigger than the life I had. I felt such a strong connection to people like HBK, Sting, Macho Man, the NWO, Goldberg and everything that was going on at that time I LOVED it. It just made me feel apart of something which I had never been up until i got involved in the hardcore scene when I was about 15. So anyway, I didn't really get to see my dad much which sucked because as a young male kid you really want to spend time with your father…. this is in no way a knock on him because his job transferred him down to Georgia and then a few years into living there they were like "uh we need you back in NY" and he didn't want to move us back so soon after having us move down there so he chose the alternative to travel monday-friday… as a kid, this was devastating but as an adult I respect and admire him for doing what he needed to do for his family to provide for us when times weren't all that easy. It's weird now to know these things like our mortgage checks were bouncing and my parents really didn't know where our money was going to be coming from but they always made it work and when I sit here on my couch that I bought, watching the TV I bought in a house that my wife and I bought knowing that I hardly have any money…. how did my parents do it? In the 90's how did they afford to pay for the house, pay for all the luxuries we we had like heat, air, gas, cable and shit… it's such a weird thing to think about…. all I wanted as a kid was wrestling toys and Gi Joes and somehow, without much money my parents still could figure out a way to bring those into my house to make me happy. Throughout all the years where I didn't realize they were struggling they would always get me the things I wanted like wrestling shirts and figures and buttons and stickers and anything else. It's really weird to think about it when my mom tells me how they had almost no money but they still made sure to get me the one thing that always made me happy. Some of my fondest memories involve wrestling as a kid. Since my dad would travel monday - friday to NYC from Georgia he accumulated an insane amount of miles for flying so much… along with hotel rooms etc. etc. The company he worked for and still works for after 30 years ( Macy's) paid for all of that because it was a business expense (airfare, hotels, etc.)  but he personally got the comps or rewards from it. Instead of using it for vacation for him and my mom or instead of doing whatever he wanted with it… he would save them for me to give me these insane experiences that many kids didn't get to experience. He would fly me from Georgia to NYC to see wrestling at Madison Square Garden and it was literally the coolest thing in the world. He did it 3 times when I was a kid, 2 of them were simply for house shows… imagine flying from Georgia to NYC for a house show these days? Well, he did it for me as a kid… I got to see so many greats at the garden on these house shows… Yokozuna, HBK, Owen and Bret, Taker and so many others. The last one he flew me up for was Summerslam 1998 where we sat 18 rows back from the ring and he got those tickets for free from a co-worker, along with the flight and room for me and it was one of the most amazing experiences in my life. Dreaming as a kid of going to a PPV was something I thought would have NEVER have happened but he made it happen and I'll never forget to this day the HIGHWAY TO HELL Summerslam 1998 PPV. My first of the Big 4 to attend, the guy who gave him the tickets brought his kid who wasn't that big of a wrestling fan so we ignored them the whole time, ICP opened the show ( yeah I saw ICP to a sold out MSG WHOOP WHOOP) and there were so many legends on that show it was ridiculous. My dad bought me a bootleg shirt in the train terminal and I still have it in my basement. This is literally rambling by the way and if you've read this whole thing you might be a crazy person but regardless…. it just really really meant a lot to me. After sitting here and typing this for nearly 30 minutes I don't really know where I'm trying to go but I know just sitting here and thinking about my childhood and all of the ways it was different than a "normal" kids childhood I almost feel like I wouldn't have it any other way. I do wish I got to see my father more but during those years the time we spent together, while limited, was simply incredible because he always took interest in the things that made me happy. The thing that made me most happy was wrestling and he made sure that I got to experience that. I can't really wrap my head around what I'm trying to say anymore because my brain and body are tired as shit but I'm gonna try to continue this at a later date.