[rico]

I've had my moments...and to be honest, it makes me depressed thinking about it...I'm a pretty nice guy now, considering I don't feel provoked or prompted to be an asshole. I always have been nice...with just a couple-few exceptions.

The first (out of many) thing that comes to my mind is this:

When I was a Junior, our JV 145 lber (I was the varsity 145 lber) was this pimply, odd, socially awkward guy. He challenged me for the spot like 10 times that year and it was always a "haha, are you serious? Why are you even wasting my time?" type of deal. I think I pinned him in less than 20 seconds every time.

One day at the conclusion of practice, we were doing sprints for finish-ups. They seemed to be lasting forever and I was a workout warrior in practice and generally worked my ass off...so I was exhausted. Our coach made the comment, "if you guys don't stop dragging ass, we will be doing sprints for another hour!!!" I noticed our JV guy was dogging it, so I looked at him and told him that if he didn't start picking it up, I'd stomp another crater in his face. He told me to **** myself. This didn't go over well with me. I was all, "what'd you say to me, mother****er?!?!" and threw him against the wall by his neck. The guy about pissed his pants and the coaches jumped in and pulled me off him. As a result, since I was a captain, we had to run more sprints...because of my outburst.

From that point on, I was out to get that guy. I should have just dropped it, but didn't... I had nothing to prove by messing with this poor guy anymore...he wasn't a bad guy...just shy, awkward, very homely and apparently mouthy when confronted.

He and I had study hall together and after that day I made it a point to sit right next to him and **** with him. I can't even begin to write every instance in which I came up with elaborate ways of messing with this guy, so I'll just share one instance...

I taught myself how to create a webpage...for the mere purpose of trolling this guy. This was in the year 2000 when a lot of people in my area were just getting used to the internet. The webpage was titled "Iowa Cheerleaders' Vote for Iowa High School Wrestler with the Sexiest Body Award." I created a list with a bunch of ridiculous fake names. This guy was #1. At the bottom of the page I wrote, "*This year's winner will accept his award at the awards ceremony prior to the State Wrestling Tournament at Veterans Auditorium in Des Moines, IA and will have a photo shoot for Noxcema." During study hall, I logged onto one of our computers and was all like, "hey Erik, look at the incredible award you won!!!" He gazed at it in amazement and I could just tell that he was having the most difficult time containing his excitement. "He actually bought this dumb shit?!?" I thought to myself... He looked at me (in which I had pulled like 100 other pranks on him at this point, so why he believed anything I said or did was completely beyond me) and said, "so the cheerleaders voted for this?" I replied, "yeah dumbass, it says right there, you silly knucklehead! It's an actual website, bro!!! Wow man, what an accomplishment!!!" He asked, "so, I'm gonna be a professional model now?" I replied, "YES!!! Do I have to teach you how to read??? It's on the website!!!" He seriously was just trying so freaking hard to contain his smile. He proceeded to write down the webpage address and sat back down in his chair...smiling into space for the remainder of study hall.

Keep in mind this kid's physical appearance was absolutely hideous...And his body? Well I mean, the thing that sticks out to me the most when I think about what his body looked like was the acne he had all over his face, back, upper arms, chest, neck, etc.

State wrestling was like 3 weeks away and on top of preparing for districts and state and what-not, I continued working on this "Sexiest Body" award that I made up for this guy.

I gathered up like 15 people from our school to leave comments on this page congratulating this guy, some of them claiming to be cheerleaders who voted for him, asking him to meet them at various hotels in Des Moines so they could hook up.

So state weekend rolls around and after one of my state practices that week, my coach called me into his office. I thought we were going to go over scouting reports from some of the guys in my bracket...Nope. My coach asks, "so what is this about a Sexiest Body award being given to Erik?" I was thrown off guard and was all like, "uhhh...you heard about that, where'd you hear about that?" He said, "his parents called me today and asked about hotel reservations and whether they should stay at the same hotel as the team or not. I told them that no such award exists. They are crushed. Let me get this straight...you went as far as making an actual webpage to do this?" I was all, "I'm sorry, I don't know what to say." My coach concluded by assuring me that practice was going to be an absolute bitch the next day and that the whole team was going to know why (which my teammates had been laughing their asses off behind the scenes since I created the page...they couldn't believe he actually bought it).

Yeah, that was a douche move on my part. I contacted him 3 years later for being an asshole to him...Billy Madison style. I did this with 2 other people. I was a pretty nice guy to everyone in high school except for those 3... all of them had pissed me off somehow and I just pushed things too far in my trolling of them in "retaliation" to them mouthing off to me.

Overall joke is on me...17 years have gone by and I still feel bad about it when I think about it.