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I was almost thirty before I suffered my first and, to date, my only black eye. Those thirty years included about ten as a wrestler and three as a coach. I wish I could say I got my eye blackened during the heat of battle. I wish that I had been doing something cool, or daring, or at least interesting. Instead though, I was playing Ultimate Frisbee. This was during my third year of coaching wrestling at Wootton High School in Rockville, MD. On Friday wrestling practices, before Saturday matches, it was our custom to let the boys play a spirited game of Ultimate Frisbee instead of our usual practice in the wrestling room. I joined in the games too, despite not being particularly fast or adept at throwing or catching a frisbee. On this day, a recently-graduated alum was playing with us. During his career as a wrestler, he had never lacked enthusiasm, but sometimes lacked the requisite good judgment and common sense to succeed in a sport that requires constant quick decision-making.
I don't remember the exact situation, but I'm pretty sure that he and I were on the same team. When one of our teammates threw the frisbee directly to me, the boy - we'll call him Arnold - unexpectedly lunged in from several feet away, to attempt to make the catch. The top of his skull made direct contact with my right eye socket. I saw a flash of light, and I was on the ground. I don't think I lost consciousness, but I remember being shocked both by the suddenness of the collision and by how much it hurt. From the ground, eyes still closed, I heard one of the boys say, "Whoaaaa, look at his eye!"
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| Truthfully, I was playing it up a little by closing my right eye to make it look like I physically couldn't open it. Still, it was a pretty nasty black eye. |
Here's the strange part, though: once the pain subsided (after just a few minutes), and once I was back in the boys' locker room, looking at my rapidly swelling eye in the mirror, I felt a perverse sense of amusement. My black eye was a work of art: an angry black purple blotch, almost chrome-tinted. (I could see, finally, why they called it a "shiner.") It was a badge of masculinity too: proof to the world that I was a daring, dangerous badass. Once back at home, I placed a frozen pack of peas on it to stop the swelling - but I also sat in front of my computer taking selfies, trying to find the angle that made it look the nastiest. Certainly, I never thanked Arnold for crashing into me, but I can't say I was particularly angry with him either.
As everyone knows, a black eye gives you serious street cred - or maybe not. But it's certainly a good conversation starter, as I found out when I went out that evening. Strangers commented on it all night. The 270-pound bouncer at a bar told me, "Nice shiner, man," before handing back my ID. "Got it during wrestling practice," I told them, keeping the details deliberately vague. And then, because I couldn't resist, even though it was the most obvious cliché: "You should see the other guy."
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| Cleaning blood off the mat during a break in the action. |
