By Coach B

More emails from criminals as we patiently await actual human beings to send in questions.

Sometimes one comes through that demands immediate attention.

This one absolutely qualifies.

“Big Pharma tried to keep Bill Gates quiet about this massive military erection secret (Here’s why).”

Sender: not visible in the screenshot, which feels appropriate.

We’ve got Bill Gates, who has been in and out of the news lately for some of his relationships, and apparently he has a big secret.

You see Bill Gates and “big secret” and think, okay.

I know where this is headed.

Trips to the island.

Nope.

Military.

All right. Bill Gates. Military. Microsoft.

I’m with you.

Then we get:

“Massive military erection secret.”

Huh.

Massive military erection secret.

Normally when I tell a story about a former player, I might think twice before making whatever connection my brain just made between him and a massive military erection.

Except I know this kid well enough to know he absolutely would not mind.

Cade was built to be a Marine because Cade was always going to be a Marine.

Excellent athlete at pretty much everything he did. His dad was a police officer who once explained him to me perfectly.

“If he cares about something, he’ll be great at it.”

Then he looked at me.

“You’ve had him in class. If he doesn’t give a shit, he definitely doesn’t give a shit.”

Correct.

Somewhere in the middle of the COVID mess, Shelby hired an English teacher who we’ll just call Miserable Asshole because that was considerably more accurate than whatever was printed on her ID badge.

She also had some very left leaning politics, which is fine.

Have whatever politics you want.

The problem was that instead of teaching English and going about her day, she decided the kids needed to hear all of them.

Constantly.

It became less about them and more about her beliefs, her opinions, her platform.

So during one of those senior writing assignments about what you planned to do after graduation, Cade wrote that he was going into the Marines.

Her feedback, along with a shitty grade, was essentially:

“You should want more for yourself than going around killing people and blowing stuff up for a living.”

Wildly unnecessary.

You could have just said good luck.

A couple years later, during one of my brief visits to Instagram, I saw a post from Cade.

He had joined the Marines exactly like he said he would.

Like most people entering any profession, he had discovered there is the thing you imagine and then there is the actual job, where somebody still makes you do bullshit.

I’ve had a number of former players go into the military, and I’ve always said the military seems remarkably good at figuring out what people are naturally suited to do.

Whatever aptitude test they give you, I trust it.

Cade apparently filled his out in a manner that communicated:

I would like to blow shit up.

Accurate.

He liked blowing shit up.

From all accounts, he was pretty good at it.

One day he posts a picture from Hawaii with a message directed at his former English teacher:

“You said I’d never amount to anything except blowing stuff up. Well, I’m in Hawaii blowing stuff up, you fat bitch.”

Politically correct?

Absolutely not.

Accurate?

Every single word.

I also learned from Marines somewhere along the way that boot camp apparently produces nicknames for the guy in every group who possesses an unusually large hog.

Smoke Hound.

Donkey Dick.

Things of this nature.

That also has nothing to do with Bill Gates.

Or his massive erection.

But we got there.

“Your wife will thank you.”

From: Military Honey Trick
Email: jpyksupportdd@yp-bzpjzuadmlwyjmnipduyid.com

First, if you’re unhappy with Google, have you considered yp-bzpjzuadmlwyjmnipduyid.com?

Military Honey Trick.

Again, I understand.

Defense budget. Military spending.

But I can’t help reading these questions and wondering how much money, as a country, we are spending on dick related military science.

I’m starting to feel like it’s not zero.

Before these emails, you could have convinced me it was definitely zero.

Now?

We need to look into this.

It’s the same advice I give friends before a big job interview.

Listen, pal, I’m not telling you how many times to swear during the interview.

I’m just telling you the correct number is not zero.

What you do with that information is completely up to you.

I almost missed the subject line, though:

“Your wife will thank you.”

I was married for four years.

Or what I thought was four years.

We were definitely married.

There was legal paperwork involved.

Eventually there was absolutely legal paperwork involved in us no longer being married.

If you’re going to get divorced, I recommend doing it at 25 when you don’t have kids and don’t own anything meaningful.

That is absolutely the way to go about it.

There’s nothing funny about divorce. They’re painful in some variety almost every time.

Also, as the old joke goes:

Why are divorces expensive?

Because they’re worth it.

When my ex and I split up, there wasn’t one giant explosive event.

It was mostly two people who got married at 20 becoming 24 or 25 and realizing this probably wasn’t going to work.

Well, at least the two of us realized it then.

Come to find out, it had apparently been obvious to literally everyone around us for years.

Including, but not limited to, her parents.

They had made it clear from the beginning that this was a terrible idea.

I, in particular, was a terrible idea.

That was basically their position.

When her mom came to move her out of our duplex, she left me a mattress, some condiments and not much else.

She took the shower curtain.

That always felt especially petty.

We both knew I wasn’t going to buy another shower curtain for a while.

Not because of the money.

Just general principle.

I was obviously not going to buy a shower curtain.

And she knew this.

Taking the shower curtain felt low.

The thing that actually hurt, though, was Rudy.

Rudy was a chocolate Lab.

He was dumber than shit stomped flat.

This dog would often run into walls and infamously accidentally scratch himself too hard, bite his own paw out of anger, then cry.

Sweet dog.

Liked pretty much everyone.

Except me.

I bought Rudy for her, so "technically" she took her dog but he was always looking out for me. 

Her parents lived in a gated golf course community in Louisiana.

My family most certainly did not.

This was one of several differences between us.

I thought living in a trailer park was a perfectly reasonable economic solution.

She grew up on a golf course behind a gate.

You’ve already done the math on where there was an issue.

*(Sure, there may have been other issues, semi-related to me bartending for my derelict friends at my hometown bar...but I digress.)

So we divided up the few assets we didn’t have.

Those DVDs are mine.

Fine, the Stargate television series is yours. Complete bullshit anyway.

Those old WWF magazines?

Absolutely mine.

My factory sealed Bo Jackson Starting Lineup?

Not negotiable.

There were several things I became extremely protective of that she had absolutely no interest in owning other than possibly using them as kindling.

I would later discover this is apparently how women in my life show affection for me.

Destroying things I love.

Recurring theme in my life. 

But when it came time for Rudy to leave, that actually sucked.

She paid hundreds of dollars for one of those animal transport services to take him down to Louisiana.

They loaded this big dumb animal up, and it was sad.

I was crying.

My buddy Rick was there. He had moved in with me almost immediately because there was no chance in hell I could afford our shitty apartment across from Kalamazoo Valley Community College by myself.

And as Rudy pulled away, I found one small piece of comfort.

My former mother-in-law hated my guts.

Rudy had exactly one marketable skill: destroying carpet and anything else he sensed someone might care deeply about.

So somewhere inside a very nice house in a very nice gated community in Louisiana, my boy Rudy proceeded to do what I can only assume was five figures’ worth of damage.

Terrible with walls.

Elite against flooring.

Atta boy. 

“Small print pays better.”

From: Harper from USA SW
Email: hello10@usa-sw.com

You do the best you can with these questions because I’m not getting much help from anywhere else.

Then I saw it was from Harper.

And that reminded me of the power of marketing.

Because Harper was also the name of the sales girl at Gazelle Sports.

Somewhere in my post-divorce years, I convinced myself I was going to run a 5K.

I’m not going to ruin anything for anybody.

I absolutely did not run a 5K.

I bought one of those apps that was supposed to teach me how to walk, then run, then eventually complete a 5K over eight weeks.

Eight weeks seemed excessive.

It’s a couple miles.

Surely it should not take two months to get my fat ass in shape to run a couple miles.

It did.

Mostly because I did not do it.

But part of this plan was realizing I could not possibly fail to train for a 5K in the shoes I already owned.

No.

I needed brand-new running shoes for the race I would not participate in.

So I went to Gazelle Sports in Kalamazoo.

Running shoe store.

Whatever amount of money you think ugly shoes from a brand that wasn’t Nike or Reebok should cost, double it.

This was the early 2000s.

I’m not from $100-a-pair-of-shoes people.

I’m from how many pairs can we get for $100, and how long can we make those sons of bitches last?

I got about two feet into the first rack before looking at the price tags and realizing I was in the wrong store.

I was still delusional enough to think I might run at some point.

But spending close to $200 on a pair of Asics seemed insane.

In my mind, Asics were wrestling shoes.

They weren’t.

But I’m not much of a detail guy when it comes to things I don’t give a shit about.

Much like my boy Cade.

So I prepared to leave.

Then she walked over.

Harper can only be described as one of the most attractive women I had ever seen in my life.

Physically fit. Casual. No makeup. Engaging. Stunning.

Piercing eyes.

Laughed at jokes I had not yet made.

And to be clear, I’ve been to a strip club before.

I understand when a woman is being nice to me for financial reasons.

At a strip club, it is fairly obvious.

You are naked.

You are telling me you like me.

Historically, I had to put in more effort than handing somebody a dollar to arrive at that point.

This woman was not naked.

That was not on the table.

I should have asked.

No.

I absolutely should not have asked.

She started explaining why this particular pair of Asics would be perfect for the 10K I was running.

If you’re reading this and thinking, wait, wasn’t it a 5K?

Yes.

She didn’t know that.

You know exactly how it became a 10K.

She tells me how admirable it is that I’m setting these goals, how she’d love to be part of the journey by getting me into the right shoes, and that she was also running the local Borgess race.

Maybe she’d see me there.

She’d love to hear how the shoes worked out.

Then I put them on.

Ugly shoes.

Comfortable, though.

And between that and the extremely attractive woman being nice to me, I was sold.

I spent $214 on a pair of Asics.

As I left, she waved, smiled and said:

“I can’t wait to see you at the race!”

And walking out of the store, two things became very clear.

One, I was not running that fucking race.

Two, she absolutely knew I wasn’t running that race.

The fact I was winded opening the heavy glass door to the store was a bit of a tell.

There’s no larger lesson here other than proving I’m a fairly simple creature.

And I did wear the shoes.

I did not run a 10K.

I did not run a 5K.

I did not even run one of those .1Ks where you get drunk walking from one end of a city block to the other.

Nothing.

I mostly wore them while mowing the lawn for about four years until I finally threw them away.

Solid investment.

-

As always, mailbag questions can be sent to AlteredStatesWrestling@gmail.com.

The only requirement is that you do indeed have to be a criminal.

Traffic violations count.

White lies count.

Anything you once told an attractive salesgirl who was clearly not interested in you absolutely counts.