My stepfather didn’t fit the usual mean, nasty, and resentful reputation like you see in the movies. Yeah, one of the first things that he did after he married my mother was to buy me a horse, but he didn’t spoil me at all. The reverse actually.
I was sort of a shy introverted fourteen-year-old, but he definitely got me to come out of my shell. Being raised so far in the inner city getting up on the back of an animal that was so much bigger than I was turned out to be a huge first step.
Mack was an interesting man. He had been a horse trainer and stunt man when he was younger. He had a stunt part in the movie “Stagecoach” and won the “All Around Cowboy Rodeo Award” in Arizona way back in the 1940’s.
Then he got in a bar fight that resulted in manslaughter charges and ended up doing seven years in Alabama State Prison. It was in the time of George Wallace and I understand that prison life in the South during that time was no picnic.
Another thing that Mack did when he was younger was to box semi-professionally. And he was pretty good at it too. Even in his fifties, he made short work of my much younger Marine Corps brother who got drunk on leave one time and decided to pick a fight with him.
One day Mack and I were browsing around at a flea market on the outskirts of town and I spied an old pair of boxing gloves sitting on one of the tables. It was the era of Muhammad Ali and I was a huge fan just like the rest of the world. I asked Mack to get the gloves for me. He finally said OK, but then told me that I would have to learn how to use them. I quickly agreed.
After a couple weeks of lessons, Mack told me that he thought I was ready. “Ready for what?” I asked. “To start using the gloves.” He replied. What Mack meant was that he was about ready to issue an open invitation to all the kids in the neighborhood, no matter how big or small, to fight me. This was a little more than I had bargained for, but I have to say that it was kind of exciting.
I actually did fight pretty much every kid that lived around me and even went on to fight a couple of Golden Gloves matches. My record was one and one. The thing that ended my budding career was a kidney punch that brought me down to my knees. I couldn’t remember anything in my short life that hurt so much. I peed blood for several days and retired shortly thereafter. At least I didn’t get hit in the head very much.
Back then safety in childhood sports was pretty much non-existent. You took your licks and went on with it. There were no batting helmets, bike helmets, football pads or anything even closely resembling them. You got your share of broken bones and had your friends sign your cast.
According to Medical News Today, boxing is one of the worst sports that you can have your children take up. According to the website:
“A sport where the main objective is to deliberately hit someone on the head is not appropriate for children and teenagers, says the American Academy of Pediatrics in a new Policy Statement, along with the Canadian Pediatric Society. Their policy statement is published in Pediatrics, September 2011 issue.”
The group goes on to say that children are much more likely to suffer concussions that adults and that head guards have not been shown to reduce the chances of getting a concussion.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a chronic, degenerative disease whose slang term is called “punch drunk” This condition can also lead to early dementia in some of these athletes.
Other contact sports like football can also result in brain trauma, but boxing seems to be the worst. Boxing is not nearly as popular a sport as it once was, but now it seems to be taken over by Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) which carries its own set of risks for injury.
Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/233510.php