Free Everything Is Wrong with Me by Jason Mulgrew

feet is just as important as how you use your hands. Be sure to properly follow through with your punches—you maximize your energy this way. Never buy cocaine from a man with one testicle. Make sure to twist your fist just slightly as your hand makes contact with his face—this tears the skin on impact. Learn to read your opponent’s face and body language for the first sign of pain or weakness and take advantage of that. The man who invents a toilet for a motorcycle will become very rich, but will die alone. Boxing is 75 percent mental and 25 percent physical; street fighting is 90 percent intimidation and 10 percent ability. Determination trumps all.
    But there was just one problem: I didn’t care about boxing. I didn’t see any practical use for it. Whenever I got in fights with my friends, short skirmishes over toys or other stupid stuff, I followed a simple plan: Grab and squeeze until the other guy says “stop” or lay on top of him until he gives up. If I were on the losing end, this tactic would change to “Try not to let him hit you in the face. After he walks away, throw something at him and run into the house.” Why then did I have to learn all this stuff about keeping my feet moving and using a frequent lazy jab to lull an opponent to sleep so that I could throw a thunderous combo? At the age of five, the only “combo” I cared to know about was a tube-shaped cracker filled with cheddar cheese.
    So my interest in boxing quickly faded, if it ever existed at all. This was a crushing blow (no pun intended) to my father. He tried to show me the ropes of other sports, but I didn’t take to them. I liked football, but it seemed too complicated, what with all the plays and different positions. I also liked to shoot hoops, but actual basketball games required way too much running. To this day, I still don’t know how to skate, so no hockey. And no one played golf or soccer or any of those rich-people sports in my neighborhood; I don’t even think I knew those sports existed until I went to high school. *
    By the time I was six, and most likely because he figured I was a lost cause, my dad had given up teaching me about sports. Perhaps he realized that in order for me to truly become interested, it would have to happen organically. Or perhaps he was just lazy. Whichever, really.
    But fortunately for him, there was one sport that I was drawn to on my own. What started as a passing interest grew first into an obsession and then into a lifelong love affair. After taking in a few games in person and on television, I made a simple decision: baseball was the greatest of all sports. And I wanted in.
     
    Prior to actually playing Little League baseball, I was certain that Little League was simply the necessary first stop on my inevitable trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame. At the age of seven, I already had the rest of my life figured out, and Cooperstown was one of its last stops. After a successful stint in Little League, I’d move on to high school baseball, where I would break no less than six school records and be the first player in school history to start varsity all four years. My incredible baseball prowess would be responsible for my first sexual encounter, which would come during my freshman year after class in the biology lab with two sexually adventurous seniors: April, a redhead who bore a striking resemblance to Tawny Kitaen, and May, a blonde who bore a striking resemblance to any chick from any Poison video (or, I suppose, to one of the guys actually in Poison). They would pull me into the lab and ask, their breath sweet with green Life Savers, “So…what’s your favorite month?” I’d look back at them slyly and say, “June.” They’d laugh, but their laughter would dissolve into a hushed awe as they looked down at my bird, standing straight and proud in my baseball pants, which they would then take and do whatever it was that girls did with guys’ birds (I hadn’t figured that part out