In your head, you’re in front of 93,173 people. You can hear the cheers, the sound of the mat. In your head, your voice is Gorilla Monsoon saying that the roof of the Pontiac Silver Dome is about to explode. You fall to your back and Gorilla says, you say, “Drop kick and a beauty.” You get to your feet, raise your hand to your ear, make sure those ninety-three thousand are still there. You come off the ropes, hit him with the leg drop. You’re about to go for the pin when your mom calls from upstairs, yelling that your dinner is getting cold.

In the late 80s, the WWF realized that they could make money off of kids wrestling pillows in their basement. So they created Wrestling Buddies, life-like, two-foot tall plush representations of their most famous Superstars. There was The Ultimate Warrior, Randy “Macho King” Savage, “The Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase, and of course, “The Immortal” Hulk Hogan. Any one of them could be body slammed, drop kicked, Boston crabbed, clotheslined, DDT’d, and moonsaulted. And those crazy sonsabitches would always come back for more.

When Wrestling Buddies were released, you still believed your parents when they told you that you could do anything you set your mind to. It’s this thinking that caused me to attempt to build a tree house in the woods, only to fall from the sixth step, slamming my face on every wooden plank I had previously nailed to the tree. I couldn’t build a tree house, but I could still be a wrestler. So, in my best Gorilla Monsoon impersonation, as quietly as possible so my brother and sister couldn’t hear me, night after night, I would beat the crap out of the Ultimate Warrior, winning the title that he so smugly wore around his waist, even in battle.

I was the most popular Superstar. That is, until I attempted a front flip off the couch, completely missed my plush target, and landed directly on my back, knocking all of the wind out of me.

My parents were a bunch of liars.