...I was just gonna post this video on Facebook, but the shit I thought I might say about it might be a little wordy. So bear with me please.
So, I don't normally post the same shit on multiple platforms, but I received a second video of my WOB in Wichita and I wanted to share this one. Not because the throw is all that stellar...it isn't really when you look at the back load...or my freaking stiff legs. BUT.
What I love about this video, why I am posting it? It's the after. The throwers...the support. Mark Wechter, arguably one of the best throwers in the country is looking on, as he had just asked me after my last throw if he could tell me something. He helped get this puppy over the bar. It's the swarm of ladies coming at me...happy in my success, as they share this throw with me....it is Donna...my dear, wonderful, inappropriate, hysterically funny Donna looking determined to get across that field...it's Chad coming all the way across the field to give me a hug.
I realized something else this weekend. I often find myself pregame, thinking....I am gonna be serious this time. Demure, as Cindy Johnson might say. And well, It never happens.
I am, frankly obnoxious.
Something happens when I get on the field..this switch in me, and I realized that it is me. That "obnoxious" is me. All the other places and obligations and old voices that pressed on my chest, were pressing on me. A part of myself. Now that is not to say that those other pieces of me, the work me, the serious me, the obligated me, the whatever, are not really me...but that boisterous, happy, slightly crazy, off color person that shows up on the field is me too.
The first nickname I got from the NMCA throwers was Giggles...not sure but I think it was Jason Kleymann that gave me that moniker. I just know that at that point in my life I was often, well, very sad, very squeezed tight. I found not just joy in throwing, but a little piece of me that was lost...a piece of worth was discovered ten years ago on that field, fueled by the nearly year I spent in a gym for the very first time. Again surrounded by people who let me, be, well, me.
It has been a difficult few years....going back, well, an embarrassingly long time and I still look at Grant sometimes and worry that the putdowns will come. But they never do. That is not him...he does not get angry when I am joyful. He finds joy in me...being me.
Poor bastard. 😊
There will always be some pain and hurts and frustrations, but these moments on the field with these women...that's the shit right there...good throw or not. And I will march my ass across the field for you too my beautiful ladies.
