Post by Skyler Striker on Mar 5, 2007 7:28:20 GMT -5
Looking back on Jack of Blades and Ace Resoland in particular, I, Skyler Striker, have seen the value of keeping one’s own beginnings in mind. Therefore, in the same manner as Jack and Ace, I have decided to write of my past, how I came to wrestling, and why I am Skyler Striker. These are the Origins.
My father passed away two nights after he crushed my dreams. I was only twelve at the time, and my mother was absolutely devastated. She was almost suicidal until a friend managed to talk to her and took her to a grief counselor. The doctor said of my father that it was a heart failure. To be honest, I didn’t care what did it, as long as it was done. After that night, I hated my father. I would have loved to tell it to his face, but unfortunately he died. To this day, as I write this, I still maintain that hatred – although admittedly without it I would not have become a wrestler, so I must give credit to my father for saying what he did. We had the funeral and my mother was quite upset. I wasn’t, so I went on as normal, although for the next few weeks I had to put up with extended periods of crying. I stayed at Jayden’s for a while, as his mom was very close friends with mine and wanted to give her space.
We moved past this point in my life and entered high school in year eight the next year. It was very different. The five of us remained very close and made sure we all had the same classes. We all got involved in the usual sports that come with Australian P.E. classes but never got wrestling. When Andrew asked the teacher, he laughed at us and said it was an American sport. Scott chose to continue the argument and said that calling it pure American was a lie when it was a mix of Mexican, Japanese, and American. The teacher chose not to reply, perhaps due to lack of knowledge and the fact he knew he’d lost the argument or perhaps he just thought Scott was making it up. Wrestling never came up again in our P.E. classes.
In the middle of year nine, the following year, we were having lunch at a beach excursion and I told the guys the story of my father’s death and what he had said to me. I had never told anyone of it before, so it was a big moment for me. They listened and all nodded. Within the next ten minutes, they had all confessed to exactly the same thing. We made another pact, right there, that the first year out of high school, we would pool our money, fly to America and learn to wrestle.
The rest of the year was pretty relaxed, as was year ten, but in year eleven things started to pick up in terms of pace. We were becoming older and the five of us were the top athletes the school had to offer. We were often separated due to going overseas, competing in certain team contests and especially the marathons. The Blackwood Marathon was our best event. Five different distances on foot, in water, on a bike, in a canoe and riding a horse respectively. I swam, Scott rode the bike, Andrew canoed, Jaden ran, and Dylan, ever the animal lover, was our horseman. We won every single year, and every year the winners trophy was awarded to ‘Index 5’. We asked that they inscribed it that way, as we loved the name and now everybody we knew called us that wherever we went. The big event of year eleven, however, was not the Blackwood Marathon as it was every other year – it was our year eleven dance.
There were two dances in high school – year eleven, girls asked guys and year twelve, guys asked girls. If you didn’t have a date, you just weren’t cool. End of story. Of course, being athletes, we were all very fit, and we had a few girls ask all of us. Jayden was the first to go, then Dylan, then me, Scott and finally Andrew. That was all on the same day, of course, which was the first day the dance was announced. We were all friends with our dates, but I was particularly friendly with mine – a girl by the name of Shaneyah Phoenix. I had met her in year nine and we hit it off pretty well. She wasn’t an athlete, rather a smaller, wittier girl that was incredibly, incredibly bright and had a good sense of humour. She sat with me most of the time and hung out with Index 5 whenever we sat down during lunch. The rest of the guys didn’t mind having her there, although they never asked if we were dating. I assumed they all thought we were, even though we had never asked each other.
The dance came and we all arrived in our limousine, suited up to match our dates. The dance was a very eventful night – Jayden was asked out by his date and said yes, Andrew managed to accidentally step on his date’s toe and break it, requiring her to leave the dance halfway through because she was in so much pain, Dylan was asked out by his date and said no, which resulted in some awkward moments on the ride home, and Scott’s date was asked out by someone else on the night and said yes, leaving us with one less person on the ride home and making Scott feel like an idiot. I, out of all of this, asked out Shaneyah, and she said yes. I was ecstatic, and left the limo on the ride home feeling on top of the world.
The next day I got to school and everyone knew about what had happened between Shaneyah and I. I got a lot of congratulations, a lot of cheers, some wolf-whistles and even a ‘Striker! Striker!’ chant. A lot different to the chants I get now in arenas, but still a chant. Shaneyah walked in while I was going to my locker and the hall room went quiet. I looked around to see her and she came up to me, grinned, and kissed me. It wasn’t a big, romantic one, but it was on the lips, and the wolf-whistles increased ten fold. She left for class and I went with the rest of Index 5 being hassled, although Jayden was in the same type of spot, and we all took a few pot shots at Dylan, who had said no because ‘he didn’t feel the romantic attraction necessary to date the girl’. He didn’t talk to us for the rest of the day, just remaining quiet, but we all gave him a pat on the back for having the courage to shut someone down like that.
Over the rest of the year, Shaneyah and I grew a lot closer and she was almost another member of Index 5, although Scott started having some problems with this. we sorted it out eventually and made her an ‘honorary member’ before we ended the year. We all graduated year twelve next year and pooled our money together as we had said we would. When it was all there, we collected it and counted it. It was more than enough, thanks to one of Andrew’s great aunts dying and leaving all of her money to him (she having been a very prominent European scientist and leaving him in excess of three hundred million dollars). We organized the flights and went to the airport, only seventeen years old. Our parents farewelled us and my mother made sure to pull me aside to give me some advice. She was big on reading obscure books and gave me some advice from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”. She said to me in a serious voice: “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. Go. Be a winner, and prove your father wrong, Skyler.”
That day, my respect for my mother increased tenfold.
My father passed away two nights after he crushed my dreams. I was only twelve at the time, and my mother was absolutely devastated. She was almost suicidal until a friend managed to talk to her and took her to a grief counselor. The doctor said of my father that it was a heart failure. To be honest, I didn’t care what did it, as long as it was done. After that night, I hated my father. I would have loved to tell it to his face, but unfortunately he died. To this day, as I write this, I still maintain that hatred – although admittedly without it I would not have become a wrestler, so I must give credit to my father for saying what he did. We had the funeral and my mother was quite upset. I wasn’t, so I went on as normal, although for the next few weeks I had to put up with extended periods of crying. I stayed at Jayden’s for a while, as his mom was very close friends with mine and wanted to give her space.
We moved past this point in my life and entered high school in year eight the next year. It was very different. The five of us remained very close and made sure we all had the same classes. We all got involved in the usual sports that come with Australian P.E. classes but never got wrestling. When Andrew asked the teacher, he laughed at us and said it was an American sport. Scott chose to continue the argument and said that calling it pure American was a lie when it was a mix of Mexican, Japanese, and American. The teacher chose not to reply, perhaps due to lack of knowledge and the fact he knew he’d lost the argument or perhaps he just thought Scott was making it up. Wrestling never came up again in our P.E. classes.
In the middle of year nine, the following year, we were having lunch at a beach excursion and I told the guys the story of my father’s death and what he had said to me. I had never told anyone of it before, so it was a big moment for me. They listened and all nodded. Within the next ten minutes, they had all confessed to exactly the same thing. We made another pact, right there, that the first year out of high school, we would pool our money, fly to America and learn to wrestle.
The rest of the year was pretty relaxed, as was year ten, but in year eleven things started to pick up in terms of pace. We were becoming older and the five of us were the top athletes the school had to offer. We were often separated due to going overseas, competing in certain team contests and especially the marathons. The Blackwood Marathon was our best event. Five different distances on foot, in water, on a bike, in a canoe and riding a horse respectively. I swam, Scott rode the bike, Andrew canoed, Jaden ran, and Dylan, ever the animal lover, was our horseman. We won every single year, and every year the winners trophy was awarded to ‘Index 5’. We asked that they inscribed it that way, as we loved the name and now everybody we knew called us that wherever we went. The big event of year eleven, however, was not the Blackwood Marathon as it was every other year – it was our year eleven dance.
There were two dances in high school – year eleven, girls asked guys and year twelve, guys asked girls. If you didn’t have a date, you just weren’t cool. End of story. Of course, being athletes, we were all very fit, and we had a few girls ask all of us. Jayden was the first to go, then Dylan, then me, Scott and finally Andrew. That was all on the same day, of course, which was the first day the dance was announced. We were all friends with our dates, but I was particularly friendly with mine – a girl by the name of Shaneyah Phoenix. I had met her in year nine and we hit it off pretty well. She wasn’t an athlete, rather a smaller, wittier girl that was incredibly, incredibly bright and had a good sense of humour. She sat with me most of the time and hung out with Index 5 whenever we sat down during lunch. The rest of the guys didn’t mind having her there, although they never asked if we were dating. I assumed they all thought we were, even though we had never asked each other.
The dance came and we all arrived in our limousine, suited up to match our dates. The dance was a very eventful night – Jayden was asked out by his date and said yes, Andrew managed to accidentally step on his date’s toe and break it, requiring her to leave the dance halfway through because she was in so much pain, Dylan was asked out by his date and said no, which resulted in some awkward moments on the ride home, and Scott’s date was asked out by someone else on the night and said yes, leaving us with one less person on the ride home and making Scott feel like an idiot. I, out of all of this, asked out Shaneyah, and she said yes. I was ecstatic, and left the limo on the ride home feeling on top of the world.
The next day I got to school and everyone knew about what had happened between Shaneyah and I. I got a lot of congratulations, a lot of cheers, some wolf-whistles and even a ‘Striker! Striker!’ chant. A lot different to the chants I get now in arenas, but still a chant. Shaneyah walked in while I was going to my locker and the hall room went quiet. I looked around to see her and she came up to me, grinned, and kissed me. It wasn’t a big, romantic one, but it was on the lips, and the wolf-whistles increased ten fold. She left for class and I went with the rest of Index 5 being hassled, although Jayden was in the same type of spot, and we all took a few pot shots at Dylan, who had said no because ‘he didn’t feel the romantic attraction necessary to date the girl’. He didn’t talk to us for the rest of the day, just remaining quiet, but we all gave him a pat on the back for having the courage to shut someone down like that.
Over the rest of the year, Shaneyah and I grew a lot closer and she was almost another member of Index 5, although Scott started having some problems with this. we sorted it out eventually and made her an ‘honorary member’ before we ended the year. We all graduated year twelve next year and pooled our money together as we had said we would. When it was all there, we collected it and counted it. It was more than enough, thanks to one of Andrew’s great aunts dying and leaving all of her money to him (she having been a very prominent European scientist and leaving him in excess of three hundred million dollars). We organized the flights and went to the airport, only seventeen years old. Our parents farewelled us and my mother made sure to pull me aside to give me some advice. She was big on reading obscure books and gave me some advice from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”. She said to me in a serious voice: “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. Go. Be a winner, and prove your father wrong, Skyler.”
That day, my respect for my mother increased tenfold.
