When last we left our young, fearless preacher hero...
Just kidding. Kind of.
I feel it, as I stated before, vital that for you the reader to understand me better as a person, you must understand those that have had close and personal relationships with myself. We are shaped by, if nothing less, the relationships we hold in life. We have spoken at length of my immediate family; Candice my wife, and my two great boys, Isaiah and Jeremiah. I then spoke briefly about my parents. Perhaps at another point in time I will delve deeply into the personalities of my mother and father, but I do not feel to write about it at this time...
I thought I would take some time to mention a very special person in my life. God blessed me with a little brother growing up. When I was 2 1/2 years old, Shawn Casey Armey came into the world. The last of my parents children, and at the time, my worst enemy (according to the recollection of our mother.)
My earliest honest memories of him don't really begin until I was already close to four years old. I suppose, besides being blood related, our closest thread growing up, and really until this day has been that of professional wrestling. I know, I know. Just, suspend your disgust with me momentarily...although, I could quip on the few things positive about wrestling I will probably save that for another blog. Now that you all think less of me, I will continue on with the mainthought. In about mid-1990 I can remember watching wrestling with my brother as much as we could, only having an antenna you understand. We didn't get cable until 1994, and even then I think we only had 30 channels, but my brother and I would find wrestling.
Soon, we started wrestling. I know. Don't try this at home. Looking back at it retrospectively, and sometimes reviewing some of the surviving video tapes I realize how lucky we were to never be seriously injured. Ironically, my brother started to train to actually wrestle professionally this year and totally blew his knee out during training. Now don't get me wrong. There were plenty of bumps and bruises to go around, but we never wound up in the hospital or anything (though there were probably a few times we should have gone.)
I would be remiss not to mention the famous among us nuance of our mutually binding hobby called the FWF. Better known as the Figures Wrestling Federation. We would get all of our wrestling figures together and actually put on little shows with them, complete with ongoing storylines, champions, and predetemined outcomes for the matches. (I think so much to the point that I passed it on genetically to my youngest son Jeremiah...) I still vividly recall the first 4 inch Hasbro WWF figures we purchased when they first came out. We were going to buy Hulk Hogan, but the first week we went to the Wal Mart in Palatka they didn't have the Hulkster so we got Andre the Giant. Now, if I had any foresight at all, Iwould have kept at least a few of these in the package (some of them are now worth in the hundreds of dollars in the package!)But of course we didn't....we played with those things until the arms and legs fell off. Show after show.
I would say the bulk majority of our time spent together growing up was spent either watching wrestling, putting on wrestling shows with our action figures, or wrestling each other in the backyard in one of several homemade wrestling rings, or playing a wrestling based video game. When we got a video camera for Christmas of 1994 we began to tape our in ring exploits frequently...by spring of 1995 we had built our first off the ground ring complete with posts and ropes (though not well enough constructed that we could actually bounce off the ropes, mind you...) That summer we had a bunch of our friends over for a wrestling party that we called "Crash Carnival..." a tape that I just got through converting to DVD a few days ago...
I guess there is some pyschological warmth of feeling I have for the 'sport' despite some of the things about it that are not of redeemable value because it is hard for me to differentiate between memories of my brother and memories of wrestling. For the most part, they go hand in hand.
There is one major thing I do recall however, that involves me and my brother outside of the realm of professional wrestling. In the summer of 1995 mom and dad were dragging us to a home Bible study at one of my dad's friends' house...for most of these lessons we stayed in the back bedroom playing their Nintendo, you guessed it: 'Pro Wrestling.' However, when it came time for Bro. Finley (another person of whom I have much to say, though I will not at this point to be out of context) to teach the lesson on water baptism in Jesus' name mom and dad requested our presence at the dinner table.
Sadly, I recall no specifics of the lesson itself, only a terrible feeling in my gut: why didn't they teach us this at the Church of God? What am I going to do? These were thoughts, and I kept them to myself. It was just Shawn and myself standing outside on the small porch, together sharing no doubt the same feelings on the inside...it was my brother that spoke up. "I think we need to be baptized in Jesus' name..." Would I have had the courage to say anything at all had my brother not spoken up when he did? I honestly do not know. His resoluteness lead to our baptisms on October 1st 1995 in Gainesville, by Bro Finley, under the ministry of Jeff Arnold. When I came out of the water, God filled me with the Holy Ghost with the supernatural evidence of speaking with tongues, (of men or angels, I did not discern.) It was the greatest spiritual event of my life, but I really don't know if I would have had the courage to step in the water if Shawn had not vocalized what I was holding inside. I am forever indebted to him. I have always admired that part of him...
In high school we drifted apart to some degree. I was girl crazy. I had two or three 'serious' relationships that at the time I put above everything in my life, including God, and especially my brother. He began to hang out with kind of a gothic, punk rock crowd, and I just wasn't in to that scene. We still wrestled, but there was one year in high school that I remember going the whole year without stepping in the ring, or spending much time together at all. We had two separate lives. But it was my fault. I was neglecting him for my own selfish ambitions. I later apologized to him for this in a letter a few years ago. If I had it to do over again, I would have spent more time with my brother. For that matter, I would have spent more time with all of my family. But him especially.
Life happens so fast. After graduating I moved to Gainesville a year later, and a year after that I was in Texas, and a year after that I was married, and a year after that I was a father...And in that span of time I saw him only two or three times for the physical distance between us. He came to my wedding in 2003, along with my parents.
Now I'm 28. Still in Texas, clearly, trying to mow down the path that God wants for me. My childhood, I have realized, has come and gone. But my heart is still filled with years worth of memories, and it seems like Shawn is in all the good ones.
He has since married a wonderful girl named Amanda, and God has blessed him with twins, Kennedy and Alyssa - both of whom I got to hold the last time I was in Florida to visit. They are two now. They really were miracle babies. But do you see what I mean? How fast life goes by. I know that's not really the theme of this article, but it seems it could be.
Since moving away from Florida, Shawn and I have grown much closer. Via the magic of the telephone, we talk quite a bit. In fact, I talk to Shawn on the phone more than anyone else in my family. Something I should have spent time doing the last two years of high school. Anyway. I once told my brother in a letter, and I reiterate the point here, that the bulk majority of my favorite childhood memories involve the presence and relationship with my brother...and now that we are grown we spend time often reminiscing about those moments, but we talk about pretty much anything. I love and respect him, and he will always be my brother. Shawn, if you're reading this, I am very proud of you, and proud to call you brother.
No comments:
Post a Comment