Stevieslaw: A Good Kick in the Pants
I liked to visit my mother at the nursing home in the mornings. She loved to be served breakfast. She would sit in the big easy chair we had salvaged from her home, like a queen on her throne, and savor the food on her tray—usually something like oatmeal and stewed prunes, as she watched some talk show or other. She’d have the sound up to a level that would make a jack-hammerer wince. She never used her hearing aids.
I walked in one morning to find her pointing at the TV and shouting, “It’s the Real Deal.” But when I glanced over at the TV, all I saw was Donald Trump in full rant.
When she had calmed down, my mom spent the next few minutes trying to convince me that the guy on TV was a professional wrestling from the WWWF era.
“He called himself the “Real Deal,” she said, “But we all knew he was silver- spooner.”
I remembered that mom would watch professional wrestling on our small black and white screen almost every night. She would twist and turn in her chair as she watched, as if to give the wrestlers hints and encouragements.
“He was more mouth than moves,” she said. “He would wear a cheap orange wig and shorts to match. He would often lose the wig.”
“Not much of a wrestler,” she continued, “But he was fun to watch—his mouth never stopped moving non-stop insults. He gave hundreds of interviews. His catch phrase was that he was going to make professional wrestling great again.”
She went on to tell me that she had watched the Real Deal lose matches to some of the greats—like Crazy Luke Graham, Dr. Jerry and Tarzan Tyler.
“Ric Flair once had him in a figure four leglock for about ten minutes,” she said. The Deal was screeching so that the ref couldn’t stop laughing long enough to stop the match.”
Mom grew thoughtful for a moment as she watched the present day Donald Trump talk about deporting eleven million immigrants, building a wall, and preventing Muslims from entering America.
“He could use a good kick in the pants,” she said and went back to her coffee.