JiminQueens2's blog

Dad quickly drops to all fours, then lies down on the mat on his stomach, one forearm lying flat, the other arm propped up on his elbow. “Let’s see what you’ve got, Son,” he murmurs. I grin and drop down to meet him. Our right hands clasp, while our left hand fingers lock together. “On three,” Dad says. “One, two, three!”

Immediately, we start pushing against each other, trying to push the other man’s hand down to the mat. The muscles in our arms bulge as we exert all the force we can muster against the other, while the knuckles on our locked left hand fingers become white as we clench them even more tightly.

I get a quick initial push and force Dad into a bad position, his hand about four inches off the mat. Our eyes lock and I grin wolfishly. “This time you are going down, old man!” I say mockingly.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” comes the reply.

And slowly but surely, Dad start twisting his body, forcing his hand up, almost as if I weren’t even pushing down. My eyes widen in panic and I try to push harder, but it’s like trying to push a rock into stony ground. Dad keeps pushing until we’re back to the starting position, and then he says, “What did I hear about someone going down, little boy!”

That pisses me off and I started pushing harder. We lean into each other, our foreheads touching, our right hands clasped in battle, our left hands locked so tightly that if we’d had longer fingernails, they’d be digging into our fingers. My bicep and my shoulder are starting to ache, and I can see those strain lines around Dad’s eyes, but I am not going down!

Except that I am. Slowly but surely, Dad begins to force my hand down to the mat. One inch at a time, I lose ground, and now it’s Dad grinning wolfishly as I sink down to what seems like inevitable defeat. One more inch. Another. Another. My right hand is barely a hair-length off the mat.

And then, with a final roar of exertion, Dad pushes harder and plants my hand on the mat. We collapse onto our faces, panting with the exertion and the strain, but we’re both in excellent shape and we recover quickly. I raise my head and meet Dad’s waiting eyes. He’s doing his best not to laugh in my face, which he hasn’t always managed not to do. “First round to me, I think,” he says, smirking.

“First round of several,” I reply, “old man.”