Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2015 18:10:09 GMT
At times, it is only natural to question the sum of your life’s choices that led you to this very moment. Like what I did during my short sojourn in Ciudad Juarez over a messy burrito for lunch.
I caught sight of a Pollo Bucket restaurant across the burrito stand while I was waiting for my food, and I begun contemplating the decisions I made that led me to taking up a job offer to wrestle for a fast food chain, against some guy named El Vainillo.
Then again, you don’t end up kicking the shit out of your colleagues while wearing a funky-ass mask and calling yourself Mr. Crazy while you’re at it if you haven’t made some interesting life choices of your own, to say the least.
I guess on a lot of levels, we’re all the sum of our decisions: nobody held a gun to my head and asked me to play bleeding-for-dollars for the collective amusement of bloodthirsty wrestling fans. I could’ve given college a shot and I’d probably be working some semi-respectable white collar job at this point; insurance salesman, investment banker, real estate agent probably…
Ah, the perils of honest work.
It didn’t quite come out of the blue either, if I remember right, the mask came first. That whole “Mr. Crazy” thing sort of came into it’s own a little further down the track, when people actually started paying attention to the stuff I did to earn that namesake: baptized and born again on a sticky, blood-soaked canvass, offering the injuries I inflicted and those of my own as tribute to the desensitized masses.
It’s not that I particularly set out to be Mr. Crazy, I guess you could say that somehow along the way, I just fell into the role. It felt right when I slid that mask on, night in and night out. It felt like a light switch just went on, or off depending on how you look at it, when I put that mask on.
Here’s what nobody told me, eventually it becomes a little harder to distinguish between the person who wore the mask and the man behind it. The boundaries become a little blurrier, the lines a little more faded and washed out after each time.
I took a moment in between bites of my burrito to look down at my passport, and I see the half-smiling photograph they took of me and the name my mother gave me; before she checked herself out from that hospital and walked out of my life forever. To be honest, it’s one of the few reminders I have of the person behind the mask, that there’s an actual human being there.
I remembered looking at a promotional shot of El Vainillo on the Pollomania website, not long after I got the call from their corporate headquarters back stateside: posing in a fighting stance with his arms curled into fists, standing like a magnificent bastard with his white-and-gold Luchadore mask.
I wonder if he thinks about his life choices, the sum of all those decisions.
I caught sight of a Pollo Bucket restaurant across the burrito stand while I was waiting for my food, and I begun contemplating the decisions I made that led me to taking up a job offer to wrestle for a fast food chain, against some guy named El Vainillo.
Then again, you don’t end up kicking the shit out of your colleagues while wearing a funky-ass mask and calling yourself Mr. Crazy while you’re at it if you haven’t made some interesting life choices of your own, to say the least.
I guess on a lot of levels, we’re all the sum of our decisions: nobody held a gun to my head and asked me to play bleeding-for-dollars for the collective amusement of bloodthirsty wrestling fans. I could’ve given college a shot and I’d probably be working some semi-respectable white collar job at this point; insurance salesman, investment banker, real estate agent probably…
Ah, the perils of honest work.
It didn’t quite come out of the blue either, if I remember right, the mask came first. That whole “Mr. Crazy” thing sort of came into it’s own a little further down the track, when people actually started paying attention to the stuff I did to earn that namesake: baptized and born again on a sticky, blood-soaked canvass, offering the injuries I inflicted and those of my own as tribute to the desensitized masses.
It’s not that I particularly set out to be Mr. Crazy, I guess you could say that somehow along the way, I just fell into the role. It felt right when I slid that mask on, night in and night out. It felt like a light switch just went on, or off depending on how you look at it, when I put that mask on.
Here’s what nobody told me, eventually it becomes a little harder to distinguish between the person who wore the mask and the man behind it. The boundaries become a little blurrier, the lines a little more faded and washed out after each time.
I took a moment in between bites of my burrito to look down at my passport, and I see the half-smiling photograph they took of me and the name my mother gave me; before she checked herself out from that hospital and walked out of my life forever. To be honest, it’s one of the few reminders I have of the person behind the mask, that there’s an actual human being there.
I remembered looking at a promotional shot of El Vainillo on the Pollomania website, not long after I got the call from their corporate headquarters back stateside: posing in a fighting stance with his arms curled into fists, standing like a magnificent bastard with his white-and-gold Luchadore mask.
I wonder if he thinks about his life choices, the sum of all those decisions.