WWE: The Diabetic
While
learning about the physical and mental effects of various chronic
diseases in my Health Psychology class, my teacher saw fit to include
the students in a classroom activity to better emphasize the lesson
plan of the day. After a brief lecture outlining several prevalent
diseases in American society, the esteemed professor Jeannie
Loeb
displayed several questions on the overhead display and asked each of
us students to write down our responses. The questions dealt with
various issues about where we saw ourselves in ten years, including
family size, hobbies, and ideal career choice.
For me the
most interesting question concerned my ideal career path, and
having just watched Wrestlemania 23 as well as having discussed this
subject on several occasions with my good friend Danny
Horwedel, I
naturally chose ‘Professional Wrestler’ as my
future occupation. Eagerly I wrote it down on my index card along with
my other answers and awaited further instruction from the professor.
After
everyone finished answering the questions, Professor Loeb handed
each student another index card listing a chronic disease that, for the
purposes of the exercise, we “contracted.” My
disease was diabetes, a metabolic disorder that affects nearly
two-hundred million people world-wide. Upon first learning of my
disability I thought myself in somewhat of a harsh predicament,
considering the additional lengths one must take on a daily basis to
maintain a healthy lifestyle compared to a non-diabetic, until I
noticed that, according to her index card, the girl sitting to my left
developed Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease and the girl to my
right contracted AIDS.
Professor
Loeb then asked us to consider how our newly contracted
disease
would affect the hypothetical livelihoods we had just written down in
response to the questions she earlier posed. Immediately I began to
laugh as I considered the implications of my disease on my career
choice, and, naturally, Professor Loeb asked me to share my responses
and disease with the class.
I announced
my aspirations in the field of wrestling entertainment (and that,
consequently, I did not have a girlfriend, though I maintain that the
two are not related) among my other livelihood ideals and that I had
developed diabetes. The professor then asked how my disease would
inhibit my ideal life and career, to which I responded that, if
anything, diabetes would only help my career as a wrestler by giving me
a killer gimmick.
The
Undertaker is the Prince of Darkness, John Cena is a white rapper, and
I would be The Diabetic.
I had it all planned out. As Def
Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” blared
over the loudspeaker, I would make my entrance to the ring, dominate my
opponents with daring aerial maneuvers and unparalleled ring-work, then
finish them off with my signature moves, 'The Flying
Finger-Prick' and 'The Insulin-Drop.' I
would even have a special escape move. If stuck in a
grapple from which I could not escape, my manager could rush to the
ring from backstage with a piece of cake, force-feed it to me, and the
sugar rush would give me the super-human strength to escape the hold,
similar to Pop-Eye and spinach.
To my
response Professor Loeb reacted with a moment of incredulous silence
before asking for another volunteer to share their livelihood choices
and
disease with the class. Naturally I will send her front row tickets
when The Diabetic
headlines Wrestlemania 33.
