Day Three - The Poetry Of Wrestling

I took this playwriting class in college, and we did this exercise one time where my professor handed us each a random news article from an international newspaper and told us to write a scene based off of the article.

Mine was about a group of Japanese sumo wrestlers who all got into a bar fight after one of the wrestlers misquoted an ancient Japanese poem.

I kept the clipping after the assignment and kept coming back to it. It just seemed golden.

About six or seven months after I wrote a scene based on this article, I got this wacky idea that I wanted to write a children's book and have someone awesome illustrate it for me. I wanted to write about something that could be funny and quirky, and this article immediately came to mind.

So I started writing this story about this sumo wrestler named Gagamaru who loved writing poetry and kept getting himself into all kinds of predicaments.

I hadn't looked at what I'd written for this in a long time, but I was going through some old files on my computer tonight and came across it. I decided to write another scene with Gagamaru as my Day Three writing.

So without further ado, allow me to introduce you to my friend Gagamaru.

All his life, Gagamaru wanted to be a poet.

But his 200-kilogrammed body always got in the way.

He was a sweet man, really. But when you’re seven-foot-three, no one believes you when you say you’re sweet and just want to recite your poems.

That’s why Gagamaru wrestled.

He was an orphan; his parents had either died or abandoned him, he was never really sure which. No one ever told him.

With no one to help him grow up, Gagamaru never really did. He grew, that’s for sure, but not in the way grownups grow up. He grew up upwards and sideways instead of the other way.

Gagamaru never wanted to be a wrestler, but when you’re over seven feet tall and weigh as much as Gagamaru did in Japan, you can be guaranteed to not be a fisherman or pottery-maker.

Which is why, at nineteen, Gagamaru left his orphanage in Kuroishi, Japan, and set out for Tokyo, where he figured it would be easy for someone as big as him to find work.

He was wrong.

It was hard.

He at first thought about being a sumo wrestler.

But after being told all the rules of being a sumo wrestler and that he would have to join a training stable and live with other wrestlers, Gagamaru changed his mind.

His time in the orphanage proved that he wasn’t very good at living in such close contact with others. Especially with others who were his size and intimidation wouldn’t work in his favour.

So not knowing what else to do, he made friends with betting men. Betting men who were friends with other betting men who were friends with other betting men who were friends with other big men whom Gagamaru could fight.

He guessed once that this was illegal. They usually met in secluded or abandoned buildings, and they always ran when the police showed up.

But it was a way for Gagamaru to live, and he needed to live to be alive.

He found a small apartment above a bar in the poorest part of Tokyo and tried to be happy fighting and living.

When he got sad, he would make up poems, and that usually made him not hate life.

But everything changed when he met Helen.

“Police!”

Gagamaru heard the cry, but wanted to get one last punch in before he had to leave. He quickly threw a fist at his opponent, then turned and made his way out of the arena without even looking to see that his opponent was lying on the ground from that last punch.

He just wanted to get out the building.

Gagamaru didn’t like the police, and the police didn’t like Gagamaru. He had spent enough cold and lonely nights in their jail to know that.

He moved quickly through the crowd of people, trying desperately to get out as fast as he could.

He was moving so quickly, he didn’t even notice the girl two feet below him.

“Stepping on me, stepping on me, stepping on me!”

Gagamaru looked down and saw her and realized she was right, he was stepping on her.

He tried to move to his right, but there were too many people running.

He tried to move to his left, but there was a wall there, and Gagamaru had broken through enough walls to know that people get upset when you do that.

He tried to move backwards, but all he got was yelling from the people behind him.

He tried to move forward, but again heard the girl say, “Stepping on me!”

He didn’t know what to do or where to go. And then he heard the sound of the police outside the front door.

He had to get out now.

Scooping up the girl in his arms, he ran forward.

When she began to squirm, he threw her over his shoulder and ran faster.

The door was locked, but locks were no match for Gagamaru.

He didn’t stop running when he felt the sun on his face – he wanted to get as far away from the police as he possibly could.

He ran and ran and ran, past the bars he sometimes frequented, past the hotel he was living in at the moment, past the fruit stand he loved to stop at in the mornings.

When he reached the water, he stopped to catch his breath for a moment.

It was at that moment he realized he still had the girl over his shoulder.

Her words of “stepping on me” had been replaced with the repeated phrase of “put me down”.

Carefully, Gagamaru set the girl down, then instantly jumped away from her as she began throwing punches at him.

Gagamaru didn’t expect this little girl’s punches to hurt.

“What were you thinking?!” she asked, still trying to punch him. “Are you trying to kidnap me?”

“I just wanted out,” Gagamaru said weakly, holding her arms down so she couldn’t punch.

“Why, are you afraid of the police?”

“Aren’t you?”

That made her stop throwing punches and look at him.

“I wasn’t doing anything illegal,” she said, staring straight into Gagamaru’s eyes.

Her stare made him nervous it was so intense.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly.

“For what?”

Gagamaru thought about this for a minute. He knew you were supposed to be honest with apologies or they didn’t matter.

“For stepping on you and throwing you over my shoulder and carrying you all this way.”

“You’re not sorry you were illegally fighting?”

“I, I just wanted to fight.”

“You want to fight? Fight legally! You’re as big as a whale, why are you giving yourself the short end of the stick and fighting in illegal fights?”

“Well how else am I supposed to fight?” This girl was making Gagamaru’s head hurt.

The girl didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at him. Then she started walking around Gagamaru in a circle. He stood as still as he could, not sure of what was going on.

“How much do you weigh?”

“200 kilos.”

“Height?”

“Seven and three.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Name?”

“Gagamaru.”

This game was fun to Gagamaru.

“I’ll train you.”

The game ended and Gagamaru was confused.

“What?”

“I’ll be your coach. That’s what I do. I coach wrestlers. I find them good, clean fights. I don’t have a wrestler right now and I need one. You don’t have a coach and you need one. It seems to me that this is fate.”

Gagamaru didn’t know much about fate. But he liked this girl.

She stuck out her hand.

“My name is Helen. And I will help you become the best fighter in the world.”

Gagamaru really liked this girl.

“Balance is key. You’re strong, but you can fall. We’ve got to get you quicker on your feet, and that starts with balance.”

Gagamaru tried to listen closely to Helen’s words. He knew listening was important.

“Here.”

Gagamaru looked quizzically at Helen’s outstretched hand holding a book. He thought this lesson was about balance, not reading. Had he been listening wrong? He blinked, telling himself he would try to listen even better.

“Take it,” Helen said, gesturing with the book.

Gagamaru took it, confused. He started to open it, but Helen waved her hand. 

“Not for reading,” she said. “For balance. Here, I’ll show you first.”

Gagamaru watched in amazement as Helen carefully set another book on the top of her head, then began walking in a straight line, her hands held out. He had never seen anyone do this before. He held back a laugh; she looked so funny walking that way, her face scrunched up in concentration.

She turned around a few steps later, walking back to him, the book steady on the top of her head.

“See?” she said. “Now you try.”

Gagamaru stood up and puffed out his chest.

This was easy, he thought.

I could do this in my sleep, he thought.

Why won’t the book stay on my head, he thought.

Gagamaru hadn’t even taken a step before the book toppled off of his head.

Making a face, he picked the book off of the floor and put it back on his head, ready to walk and show Helen how easy this was.

Only the book wouldn’t stay on his head.

No matter how many times he tried, he could not get the book to stay on his head.

“Helen!” he finally yelled in frustration. “Why won’t it stay?”

Helen walked over to Gagamaru and stepped up on the bench next to him to reach his head, placing the book very carefully on the top of his head. “Now,” she began. “Put your arms out like this. Good. Take a deep breath. Close your eyes if you need to, and clear your mind. Now. Take a step.”

Gagamaru took one more deep breath, then stepped with his right foot.

Then his left.

The book stayed!

He turned to look at Helen, excited.

And the book fell off his head.

“Excellent!” Helen said, clapping her hands. “You took two steps more than you did five minutes ago! Progress!”

Gagamaru grinned from ear to ear.

Helen was proud of him.

And this time, he was going to try taking three steps.