It’s difficult to tell you my family’s history without beginning with mine, and the first few years of my life are accurately and concisely told in a court report easily found online or on file in the 19th Judicial District Court of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. I was the minor child, Jason Ian Partin, and four years previously I had been abandoned by my mother and placed in the Louisiana foster system.

Whenever I relate wrestling to my military experiences, one example always comes to mind. In the hot summer of 1992, I was one of nine paratroopers our of 260 who had made it through two weeks of food and sleep deprivation and practically 24 hour a day ardourous physical exhertion in full combat gear. This was the 82nd Airborne’s pre-ranger course, a condensed and exaggerated version of the two month long Ranger school. The 82nd had a few slots prime military courses, like the Ranger course, and General Ninja Nix insisted that we only send the best of the best and represented the Division well. I had previously won a brigade-level contest for Air Assault school at the home of the 101st Airborne and of the five of us from the 82nd attended, and we all graduated in the top ten out of hundreds of soldiers. But, by then we had already rappelled out of helicopters and rigged equipment for helicopter extraction and marched dozens of miles in combat gear, so the course was relatively easy for us and Air Assault felt like merely a 10 day formality where we were given three meals and allowed 12 hours a day to relax or sleep. Pre-ranger, on the other hand, was two weeks of constant stress, 24 hours a day, and the closest thing I would experience to real world combat feelings and fatigue, and at the end I felt not unlike how I had felt after two weeks in high school wrestling camps, cutting weight for junior nationals to best represent my state in nationals.

On my second day after returning from the first Gulf War, I was walking across across the common grounds of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment when an authoritative voice presumably shouted to me.

“Hey there, soldier! What the fuck you wearin’?”

I looked around and saw The Sergeant Major and snapped to attention and waited for him to walk close enough to talk without shouting. He stopped and put a half smoked and unlit cigar into his mouth and looked me up and down for a brief moment. He removed his cigar and said, “I asked what the fuck you wearin’, Private.”

I left MawMaw’s house and didn’t know where to go. I was upset and overreacting, like many 17 year olds do, but I was calm enough to know I would have to sleep somewhere that night, and eventually I’d return to school; I didn’t have to now that I was legally able to drop out, but I didn’t dislike it enough to put on my walking shoes and leave, especially with only two months left. I would finish school, but that meant finding a place to sleep for two months. I didn’t want to see Wendy, because every time I considered it I felt overwhelmingly emotional, upset and angry and confused. When I considered Leah’s family, I felt that I had outstayed my welcome; they never said so, but I felt it. I didn’t know where to go, but I was going somewhere, and I flew along I-10 and automatically exited by the new state capital and rode pass the Centroplex and arrived at the downtown wrestling club where I had trained for junior olympics the year before. I hid my motorcycle in the alleyway and let myself in with a key I had made at the same Vietnamese general store that I had copied Coach’s key.