A Walk In The Park

 Yesterday was probably the first nice day of 2011, temperatures around sixty, bright, blue skies -- jacket weather, to be sure, but spring jacket weather. So I decided to spend some time at the park.
This particular park is largely natural, a mix of woods and glens with a few biking and hiking trails and a couple roads so you can get around. I brought my camera with me so I could take pictures of whatever caught my eye. I was not alone. A lot of other people decided to take advantage of the warmth that had finally arrived, and a few of those had cameras, even if their tastes in pictures might have been more ... traditional than mine.

After walking for what I can only guess was a mile and a half, two miles, I finally got to a picnic grove where I could sit for a while. While I was sitting, I noticed a man out jogging with his dog. This particular man with his dog struck me as odd because the man was running ahead of the dog, and the dog seemed to be trying to catch up. Usually, it's the other way around.

Anyway, some time later, after the man and dog had continued on and I'd finished the soda I'd brought along and a couple pretzel bites -- and a coughing fit when something had gone the wrong way, I had just put everything in my bag and was about to get up when a young woman approached me (probably around 20 years old). She had a pint of ice cream and a plastic spoon in her hand (yes, this matters). She said to me, "I was just wondering, is there some reason you're taking random pictures?" and she asked if it might be for "some project." Now, first, this is a public park. Lots of people go there and take pictures. Second, I can't imagine she was sitting in a car for all that long, watching me "taking random pictures", not with a pint of ice cream in her car, not unless her car is equipped with a freezer. So, since she hadn't bothered to say, "hello, how are you, do you mind if I sit here?" or why she was asking the question, I just said, "no," and left.
It seemed to me that she was being nosy and just a bit rude. Now, if she had said, "I'm a photography student and was wondering why you choose the pictures you choose" or "I'm taking a survey for my sociology class" or some other actual reason why she might want to know why I took the pictures I take, I might have said ... something. Am I wrong?
Anyway, I continued on my walk and as I reached almost the end --- never mind that my feet and legs were both continuing under protest at this point, I heard a faint noise to my right. I turned and saw what I think was a hawk --- could have been a falcon, I suppose. I'm not much of a bird expert --- that had just landed in the field. I first took a couple of pictures of it sitting there, then waited for it to fly off. But it seemed intently interested in the ground directly in front of it. I imagine it was waiting for a mouse or some such to poke it's head up. So, since my legs were extremely tired -- I'm guessing I walked about 3 or 4 miles -- I took a few steps forward... disappointingly quiet steps. I quickly glanced down for a twig I could break to alert the bird, but once I did, it still didn't move. But after a few more minutes, it flew off -- I have no idea why -- and I got the picture at the top of the blog. It perched in a nearby tree, but by then my feet and legs had all had enough and I managed to get back to the car and go home.

On Friday, news broke that Iowa high school wrestler Joe Northup forfeited his match in the first round of the state championships to Cassy Herkelman because he refused to wrestle a girl. And all the women's rights supporters in the country, or at least the ones I know, cried FOUL! FOUL! Sure, the boy's father said that girls shouldn't be engaging in combative and violent sports like wrestling, and if that were it, I would say he was wrong. If a girl wants to be combative and violent ... well, anyone with a sister can imagine how that can happen.

Here's the real problem, though: If a boy wrestles a girl, they will have contact that if they had in any other venue, would have the boy up on charges of indecent assault. Yes, I know: wrestling doesn't count as assault, but what I'm talking about isn't the combat or the violence, just ... touching. The kind of inappropriate touching that has you showing "where the boy touched you" on a doll to a school counselor.

To help illustrate my point, I've gathered a few of the pictures I took at a couple of college wrestling matches last year. (I was too busy this year.) I've obscured the boys' identities as best I could, because I don't want them feeling like I misrepresented them by including them in this post. I absolutely have not asked their opinions on this issue. But I didn't make any effort to obscure the colleges they represented. Not that I asked the colleges their opinions, but it would just get too much. Next I'd have to change all the uniform colors and that's not going to happen --- even though I can do it.

This first picture is fairly innocuous. I'm mostly including it because I liked it.


Do you know that in Ancient Greece, the Olympians used to wrestle (and do all other sports) naked? They apparently did that because a girl tried to compete. Now, just take a moment to imagine if the people in these photos were naked ... then, when you un-thud, imagine that one is a 20-year-old boy and the other is a 20-year-old girl.









After the events in these pictures, in some states that couple would have to get married!

Hands! Hands in new places!





In some states, the girl's father would be haulin' out his shotgun.

And we're reaching...

And we're reaching...


And just where are we reaching...


Success! Ass grab!




And we have crotch-grab!




This is more of a grab through the crotch to get to the ass:


Oh, his hands are just all over the place.


This fellow doesn't even take time out from his crotch grab when he needs to have words with the ref ... not because he's getting any thrill out of it, but because in wrestling you can't surrender your advantage.


Where is your head, mister?!







So, now someone is probably going to ask why it's okay for boys to be touching other boys in those places, and while I hate to fuel the fire of the homophobes, there certainly are gay fans of wrestling and there "could" be gay participants, wrestling really isn't about that. Much as gay men may enjoy the wriggling and the grabbing, we know that wrestling isn't about getting sexual thrills. It's about competition, strategy, skill and physical ability.

And if girls want to wrestle, that's fine. It really is. In fact, I would love it because far too many colleges and universities have eliminated their wrestling programs because of Title IX and because they didn't have women's wrestling. Adding women's wrestling would have been a much better solution (for me). But please, for the sake of school counselors and fathers-with-shotguns everywhere, please keep the boys and girls separate.

By the way, the girl, Cassy Herkelman, who was allowed to compete in the Iowa state high school wrestling championships lost her second-round match. Now, before people start wondering whether she was hoping that all the boys she would have to face would forfeit, she did have to qualify for the meet, as did another girl.