Anyone who knows me is aware of just how much I hated high school. I have only a few happy memories of the time I was forced to spend there until I quit, and one of them concerns the school wrestling team. This was an old school, and the wrestling team practiced in the girl's gym, as they didn't have their own space, and the basketball team was in the boy's gym.

I held the title of trainer, a glorified water boy who assisted the coaches at home and away meets. I taped wrists and ankles as needed and supplied ice for compresses. I was always the first one to arrive at practice and helped the girls with moving the equipment they used for their gymnastics class. It was at one of the early sessions, I was asked to wrestle by one of the female students.

Talk about taboo, boys wrestling with girls on school property. Talk about suspension or expulsion material. The girl that asked was a long-time friend. She was tall, brunette and very pretty, her name was Debbie.

"Oh, come on, what's the big deal?" she asked.

"Do I have to spell it out?" I replied.

"We don't have wrestling as part of our curriculum, " she informed me, "and it doesn't look that difficult."

"It's not, but if we get caught, we would both be in trouble," I answered.

"There is no one around to catch us, or are you afraid you'd lose?" she asked with a smile.

I finally gave up arguing and agreed. We tossed a coin to see who would have the up position, and I won. She tossed her purse to her best friend Lori, who was forever at her side and got down on the mat on her hands and knees. Thankfully for me, she was clad in sweatpants and a t-shirt and not her everyday attire. I approached and knelt next to her while wrapping one hand around her slender waist and placing my other hand on the wrist of her left arm.

The scent of her perfume filled my nostrils and soul, and the softness of her skin caused my heart to skip a beat, but I fought to stay focused as there were witnesses.

Her friend gave us the command to wrestle, and I soon discovered that this slender beauty was strong, almost as strong as I was, and very fast. She got me on my back twice, but each time I maneuvered out of it. She somehow managed to cross-body slam me and the sensation of her firm breasts pressing on my chest caused me to lose my drive I wound up on my back and with Debbie going for a pin, that's when our luck ran out.

"What's going on here?" we heard a shrill female voice ask.

We looked in the direction of the voice and discovered Miss Trenge, the head of the girl's physical fitness program standing there and she did not look happy. We both scrambled to our feet as fast as we could.

"Would you care to explain yourself, young man?" she huffed in my face.

"She wanted to wrestle, so I wrestled her," I replied turning one hundred shades of red.

The other girls who were witnesses tried to champion us but were ignored.

"We will see what the coach has to say about this," she fumed.

When the wrestling coach appeared she resumed her outrage rant, but the coach was not impressed.

"Did they have their clothes on? Were they attached at the lips?" he asked.

"No," was her reply.

"Then they were wrestling and nothing more and the trainer here is a student of good character," the coach said pointing toward me with his chin.

Miss Trenge lost her anger and became quiet.

"Maybe you should think about adding wrestling to your program," the coach suggested.

"Not a very lady-like sport," she added.

"Running around with wood clubs while chasing a ball is lady-like?' the coach asked.

The female teacher could only shoot us dirty looks before taking her leave. My friend Debbie said goodbye and departed.

The coach scolded me and then asked how the match went.

"She almost pinned me," I confessed.

"That's because, in your mind, she was a girl and not an opponent, " he replied.

I never forgot that and it served me years later at a training seminar for police officers. I was paired with an attractive rookie, and we were tasked with putting our partners on the ground and handcuffing them. Remembering what my old coach had told me, she was unable to get the drop on me.