Wrestling With Fashion

I’m still experimenting with the limits of my golf pants. This total look is eye-catching, I do believe. I’m eagerly awaiting a delivery of new golf pants, but until then, here’s more of the one pair I already own. My Arkansas cowboy boots add a powerful vibe to my attire, and the bright paisley shirt is the cherry on top of my relgalia. The colors and squares of Tie o’ the Day semi-subtly echo the plaid pants.

The pose I’m offering up harks back to Delta High School’s storied and legendary wrestling program. I cannot speak for how it is now, but when I was in high school, you could not escape the long arms of the wrestling program. Region Championships and State Championships were standard for DHS. If a wrestling competition was in town, that’s where everybody was. Remember: this was back when there were only 5 channels on television, and cell phones had not yet been born. If you wanted to watch something happening live, or just hang with a friend, you showed up at the wrestles.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was learning valuable wrestling lessons from all the matches I watched. Years later, when I was teaching in an all-Black, west Baltimore middle school, I was regularly witness to near-daily physical fights. Most teachers—male and female—were hesitant to attempt to break up fights, opting instead to wait for the school police officer to show up with pepper spray and handcuffs. And I understood why nobody wanted to jump in. It was risky business for any adult, especially for a short white girl from Utah. But I was never comfortable merely standing by during a melee, and I quickly learned that I had skills I had heretofore been unaware of. Wrestling seemed to be in my blood. Somehow, I knew wrestling holds. I could slither into the middle of a fracas and skillfully take a fighting kid down. Eventually, students called me the White Coyote. I still don’t know if it was meant as a compliment or disrespect, or both. But the word “coyote” reminded me of Dad, so I was always fine with the name.