How You Bear It by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DartFrog Blue
Published: 2021-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

Over the years, a number of interesting characters would walk through the front doors of Ocean County BJJ. We welcomed everyone to the farm, where every animal survived. That meant skilled prospects and soccer moms. I would come to learn that it also included tweakers, gangsters, bums, crazy people, and people pretending to be all four. After all, this was New Jersey.

I didn’t judge. As long as you followed my rules and your checks cleared, you were welcome at Ocean County BJJ (sometimes the checks didn’t clear, and I welcomed you anyways). Crazy people didn’t bother me. Quite the opposite: all the best fighters I knew were crazy. And I definitely was. My mats were a melting pot, as American as the Statue of Liberty. Doctors, kids, cops, and crooks, all working together.

One of the more colorful characters to walk through my doors was a teenager with long shaggy hair and a pockmarked face. He wandered into my gym and immediately annoyed me. He talked in a stream-of-consciousness fashion, changing subjects mid-sentence. He had no manners, barely any social skills, and some nasty ADHD.

I was a world-weary twenty-four-year-old. I had been through depression and addiction, and I’d seen incredible loss. I wasn’t the most positive dude in the world. I was training all the time. I was serious.

Something about this kid annoyed me, and in an earnest effort to make him go away, I mauled him in our first training session. I figured if I didn’t run him off for good, he would at least eat some humble pie and come back with a different attitude next time.

But to my disappointment, the kid was really tough. He didn’t respond to losing the way he “should” have. He liked it. Not only did he come back the next day, but the shit-eating grin on his face remained. I beat him again, then threw a good blue belt on him. He was unfazed. He was a good wrestler from his high school days, and stupid enough that he didn’t fear anyone and didn’t respect being in bad positions.

His name was Garry Tonon.

Garry became the little brother I couldn’t get rid of. He showed up for two classes a day for years. I decided that if I couldn’t get rid of him, I would at least clean him up a little. Every time he showed up with a dirty gi or cranked a submission too hard, I was all over him. He didn’t go away. Even worse, he started competing. He won some local NAGA tournaments as a white belt, using pure grit and resilience. He started bugging me about wanting to train on the weekends with Ricardo. I relented as long as I could until he followed me in the parking lot one night, talking my ear off about it.

“Fine,” I told him. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

Surprisingly, he was on time when I pulled up to his house before dawn. Garry jumped in the car, and I settled in for an awkward one-hour drive to Ricardo’s.

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