by Foley, Mick
“Can I have a bite?”
Here’s a little passage, direct from my novel Scooter, which explains just what happens to young Scooter, and how much the incident meant to him.
I handed her the sandwich. I could have sworn her thumb touched mine when the handoff was made. I looked at her mouth as she took her bite. Oh, my God, it was more than I’d dared dream. I had just assumed that she’d bite down on virgin bread, but that was not the case at all. Nina Vasquez chose instead to journey down the road that I’d just traveled. Her mouth clearly touched the bite I’d made—she was almost kissing me by proxy. She knew it too, I could tell—the way those big, dark soulful eyes looked at me as she chewed.
I don’t think she knew my life had changed as she swallowed the bite. I wondered if this was one of those moments Grandpa spoke of, where one transcends or whatever. Because I thought I’d just transcended.
I took the sandwich from her hand—the one with two bites missing. I put our special sandwich on the paper plate and placed the plate onto my lap. Where it covered my first erection.
A couple of the Divas had tears in their eyes upon hearing of young Scooter’s emotional attachment to the sandwich. Candice Michelle realized she now held more than a simple sandwich in her hands. Indeed, she held the fulfillment of my dreams.
So did I take the sandwich? You’re damn right I did. I took it and journeyed directly down the road that Candice had just traveled. And I really enjoyed the trip, too. I’m pretty sure I didn’t break any of my marital vows or any of the commandments, either. The girls really seemed to enjoy the unique culinary adventure I’d just taken them on.
“This might sound weird,” Ashley said. “But that was kind of hot.”
“Wow!” Candice said, in her otherworldly way. “I feel like I just made out with Mick Foley.”
Trish Stratus, as kind and thoughtful as she may be, had lacked the foresight to bring along some paper plates. I really could have used one.
Afghan Diary
As much as I like that story (and I hope that you did, too), I can’t help but think that I would eventually come to regret mentioning Afghanistan only as an interesting side note to my somewhat strange sandwich situation.
When I was originally asked about writing this book, I readily agreed, thinking in truth that it would be fairly effortless. After all, I would simply be putting my Foley Is Blog Web entries into book form. As it turned out, I abandoned the prefabricated Web log rehash in favor of The Hardcore Diaries. Much as I feared, my enthusiasm for the weekly Web format fizzled quickly, but not before I had a chance to do some work with it that I am very proud of. Perhaps the piece I am proudest of is my December 10, 2005, entry written on the long plane trip home, after a very emotional visit to the Bagram base hospital.
I feel strange, however, about asking readers to dive headlong into such a heavy story immediately after spending such a pleasant pit stop with Mick Foley and the five dazzling Divas. So think of the December 9, 2005, entry as a buffer zone; a way to slowly get your feet wet, before diving headlong into the deep end of the pool.
December 9, 2005
5:15A .M.,local Afghan time: Let me state for the record that Gene Snitsky can snore louder than any man on this planet. Perhaps somewhere on the plains of Africa there lies a pregnant rhinoceros, making more offensive, guttural sleeping noises than Mr. Snitsky…perhaps. But as far as people go, Snitsky gets the nod. He’s the loudest there is, the loudest there was, and the loudest there ever will be.*
Several of us are scheduled to appear on Rita Cosby’s live MSNBC show this morning. Rita’s show airs live at 9:00P .M. (ET), so due to the fact that Afghanistan is somewhere in the vicinity of way the hell over on the other side of the world, I knew our wake-up call would be coming at a very early hour. I did not know, however, that Gene Snitsky’s own, personal alarm clock would see to it that no other wake-up call would be needed.
I think we’re all very excited about Rita’s show. Not only has she treated us very well, but through adventurous and memorable days, she has become almost like one of the gang. I am truly thankful for her decision to take the trip with us. Most of us in the wrestling business accept that the mainstream news media is either going to ignore us or knock us, and I think most of us understand that Rita’s show will allow people back home to see us in a different, far more positive light than the one they’ve previously viewed us in.
My enthusiasm for this whole Web log thing may fizzle over time, but until that fizzling process begins, I am determined to offer WWE fans not only a different perspective on the big WWE issues of the day but also a perspective on the smaller, sometimes overlooked moments that make the WWE experience so unique. After all, our WWE photographers and film crews do such a great job of capturing actions and emotions that describing them in words seems kind of unnecessary. I mean, fans can see in a heartbeat how excited the troops are about our trip. A vivid Mick Foley description of why the troops are excited probably doesn’t add a whole lot to the situation.
But by taking my pen and marble composition tablet behind the scenes of last night’s huge autograph extravaganza to reveal the clandestine and heretofore unreported note-passing process that took place between the table of Mick Foley/John Cena and the table of Ashley/Candice Michelle, I truly feel like my Snitsky-induced early wake-up will not have been in vain.
I have another statement for the record. At the time of the autograph session, I was tired. Really tired. Goofy tired. Understandably tired. We were finishing up our second nonstop day of visiting bases and were given the option of either eating at the mess hall or resting in our “hooches,” armyspeak for small wooden buildings where several large wrestlers all sleep—separated only by some plywood. Do you know how fatigued WWE wrestlers have to be to all bypass a free meal in favor of a nap?
8:00A .M.We have just returned from Rita’s show, which went really well, with the exception of my having casually mentioned on national television that I was writing a Web log about passing notes to beautiful girls at our autograph session. In other words, my clandestine encounter is not so clandestine anymore. Even worse, my wife will now find out about her husband’s note-passing ways and expect a full explanation.
Well, here goes: with more than a thousand members of the U.S. military lined up in the cold to meet their favorite WWE Superstars (and Coach, too), you would surely expect each and every wrestler, Diva, and TV personality to be at their most fired up for the good of the fans. Not this WWE Superstar. For the first half hour of this extravaganza, I yawned, nodded off, and displayed so little charisma that I was mistaken for Al Snow. To make things even worse, I couldn’t help but notice that the reaction I was harnessing—even when seated at the same table as WWE Champion John Cena—was not what I was expecting or used to. What was the deal? Gradually, after careful study, I came to realize just exactly what the deal was.
Cena and I were seated at the second table from the entrance, with the other members seated two to a table for a total of ten tables that looped in a semicircle around the building. Now, in my mind, a good autograph session is like a good wrestling card. It should build slowly, travel a trajectory of brilliant peaks and gentle drops, and then climax with a crescendo. Therein lies the problem: Cena and I were basically the second match on the card, following the opening match…Candice and Ashley. What a predicament! The fans were going absolutely crazy for the girls, who responded in kind by really lavishing attention on the service members. The crescendo, the climax, was occurring immediately, and Cena and I were left to try to pick the crumbs from the girls’ plates. Fearing for my reputation, I fired off an angry note to the Divas. As a Foley Web log exclusive, here is the angry note in its entirety:
Dear Candice and Ashley,
The Hardcore Legend and the WWE Champion are sitting together, but by the time fans get to us, they couldn’t care less.I was so excited about this autograph session, and now you’ve ruined it. Thanks a lot; you guys are really great friends.
<
br /> Yours truly,
Mick Foley (The Hardcore Legend) &
John Cena (The WWE Champion)
Really mature, right? But hey, it seemed to be just what the doctor ordered. Just seeing the two Divas laugh revived me in a way that a Red Bull, a Diet Coke, and a double shot of espresso had failed to do. We even got a note back—meaning that since for the first time since ninth-grade gym class, I was engaged in a full-fledged note-passing session. It was awesome.
So awesome, in fact, that there was only one way to top it: photo defacement. It started innocently enough with the blacking out of a couple of Lilian Garcia’s teeth on a “Tribute to the Troops” glossy photo of WWE Superstars and Divas. It graduated to drawing aviator goggles on Vince McMahon (a questionable move at best, considering that he signs the checks) before setting our sights firmly on the image of Coach. Time seemed to fly, as Cena and I directed our considerable artistic talents into as many Coach creations as time would allow. There was Afro Coach; Mohawk Coach; Hasidic Coach; Pinocchio Coach; Kung-Fu Coach; El Coacho (Mexican masked wrestler); Mickey Mouse Coach; and others too ridiculous to mention. We even tried to create “Helluva Announcer” Coach, but we gave up in frustration when we deemed the task impossible. Hell, Vince McMahon has been trying to do the same thing for three years, and even he can’t pull it off.
I went back to the hooch in high spirits. Our time in Afghanistan has not only been a time of accomplishment, it has been a time of extreme laughter, bonding, and even note-passing. It was a time to remember, a time to relive, which I was in the process of doing when Gene Snitsky’s snores ruined it all.
December 10, 2005
Afghanistan and our “Tribute to the Troops” tour is behind us, though I think it’s safe to say that all of us will bring home memories to last a lifetime. We’ll be back in the United States in about twenty hours or so, giving me plenty of time to write, which is nice to know since I feel like I have a lot to write about.
As I look around the plane, I wonder what specific memories will be brought home. I’m sure all of us felt privileged to have been there. Yet I wonder what specific memory each individual wrestler, Diva, or crew member will take with them. I wonder whether there was a moment in a Black Hawk, a conversation with a soldier, or even a real deep look at the bleak landscape of Afghanistan that really registered in the memory banks.
As for me, I’m haunted. And no, it’s not just the memory of my Santa vs. Santa match with JBL that’s causing this. Sure, the match was really stupid…really bad, too! It was also really fun, though, and I hope the ridiculous memory of two Santa Clauses slugging it out with such devastating objects as toy sacks, down pillows, and salad tongs will put a smile on some soldier’s face at a time when he can most use one. No, it’s far more than Santa vs. Santa doing the haunting. It’s the memory of a little boy in a tiny cot in a small hospital on Bagram Air Force Base, and lessons I hope that I learned from having the privilege of being in his company.
I was in Group 3—the laughingstock of this trip. Our wrestling roster was divided into three groups of six or seven people, and over the course of our time in Afghanistan, each group set off for different locations. During last December’s trip to Iraq, I was in the “cool” group…the “macho” group. We got hit with rocket fire. We wore helmets and bulletproof vests. We crisscrossed the country via Black Hawk. I even went to the perimeter in Sumarrah. So what if video evidence showed my reaction to enemy gunfire to be slightly less than hardcore? I was there…brother.
Not this time. While Shawn Michaels and John Cena camped out with the Special Forces in the mountains, I was watching Chris Masters lose to an airman half his size in an air mattress jousting contest. Yes, an air mattress jousting contest. So, while Vince McMahon, Triple H, and even Candice Michelle visited weary, thankful soldiers at forward operating bases, I was visiting the camp’s post office. Yes, if the previous night’s autograph session note-passing incident brought back memories of ninth-grade gym class, this special post office visit brought back memories of a fifth-grade field trip. Oh, wait, I did get to do an impromptu meet-and-greet when our bus made an unscheduled stop so that Gene Snitsky could take a dump…the results of which he actually took photos of. Which I guess if I posted on this site could give a whole new meaning to the term Web log.
We also visited the base hospital, and I’ve been haunted ever since. I knew I wouldn’t be seeing any severely injured servicemen. The badly wounded are usually sent to Lundstuhl Hospital in Germany, where they spend a short transition period before being flown back to the United States. Over the past few years, I’ve been a pretty regular visitor to the Walter Reid Army Medical Center and the Bethesda Naval Hospital, both in the Washington, D.C., area. I pride myself on being pretty good with the wounded service members. More, I think, because they just feel comfortable with me than because of any special talent I have or any special wisdom I can offer to them.
I cannot claim, however, to being very good with burned children, especially one who has never seen me on his living room television set and who doesn’t speak my language.
Our group was understandably weary following our day of jousting, post office visits, and spontaneous Snitsky stops when we arrived at the small hospital. I stopped to sign an autograph and found myself quickly separated from my colleagues. Had it been a larger facility, I would have attempted to catch up, but it was just two hallways intersecting in the middle. Getting lost did not seem like a possible option. So when a chaplain asked if I would like to say hello to wounded Afghan civilians, I allowed my fellow Group 3 members to wonder where I might be and accompanied the chaplain. “There is one child, in particular, who wants to say hello,” she said. She then pointed to the rear of the room, which housed about ten or twelve injured Afghans, mostly male, who lay on small green cots that lined both walls in groups of five or six.
I asked the chaplain if the boy was familiar with WWE. “No,” she said, “he just knows that you are famous and he’s very excited to meet you.” I immediately looked at the young boy, who flashed an excited smile. I was then informed that the man in the cot across the aisle from him was a detainee, a status that required the presence of an armed guard at all times. I gave the detainee half a smile, which he chose not to return. At that time, I did not know the nature of his physical condition or the reason for his detention. Had I been aware of the reason, I would not have offered him the smile.
The detainee had apparently been making an improvised explosive device (generally referred to as “IED”), which exploded and blew off both of his hands. The wounded man then showed up at the gates of Bagram asking for help from the same Americans whose lives he would have gladly ended.
I then walked over to a boy who wore a cast on his foot. I never did learn the nature of his injury because I became distracted by another boy, much younger, whose injuries were literally breathtaking. I know the word breathtaking usually carries a positive connotation as it is most often applied to incredible views or beauty—human, natural, or other. Yet the extent of this poor child’s injuries literally took my breath away. His face thankfully had been spared from the worst of the burns on his body. Most of his body seemed to be one large mass of scar tissue, as if he’d been wrapped up in a bodysuit of angry scars. His hands were the first thing that I noticed, as they lay outside his blanket. One hand contained the vague outline of his former fingers. The other hand, the right one, seemed to be nothing more than a deformed pink and purple circle connected to a wrist. It was this hand that he extended to me when I stepped over to his bedside.
The child, the chaplain told me, was the victim of a kerosene heater explosion, an occurrence far more common to the impoverished in Afghanistan than I could ever comprehend. These explosions, the result of poorly built heaters and cheap kerosene/gasoline mixtures, are an everyday occurrence. I even saw photos of a two-day-old child whose entire tiny body had been engulfed in hideous flames.
I dedicated my 2000 children’s book Christmas
Chaos to a little boy named Antonio Freitas, a burn victim from Massachusetts, who touched my heart in a profound way. A line in the book reads, “What pain this little boy had known, such suffering for a child, but the thing that touched dear Santa most was the magic of his smile.”
Antonio had a magic smile. This poor child, Midikula, did not. Like Antonio, he knew pain and suffering, and his little face reflected it. As I mentioned, his face was almost scar-free, but sadness and despair were etched all over it.
Within seconds of our meeting, the little boy began to weep and shout out anguished words. An interpreter laid out the sad translation. “He says when he leaves the hospital, no one will care for him, He is only happy here.” Happy is not a word I would ever associate with that room of ten or twelve patients, including one terrorist. I have been allowed into the hospital rooms of suffering children many times and have been a patient myself on a few occasions. Despite the best intentions of caring staff and the tremendous assortment of board games, video games, DVDs, and televisions, I have never thought of hospitals as places where children are happy. There were no board games, video games, DVDs, and televisions in Midikula’s room. There was just a tiny green cot and the love and caring of a few dedicated professionals.
The interpreter spoke again. His words did more than take my breath away. They put tears in my eyes, a lump in my throat, a knot in my gut, and a chill down my spine. “He wants you to take him back to America,” he said. I’m not sure if I have ever, in my forty years, felt so helpless or like such a pathetic liar when I simply said, “I can’t.” “I won’t” would have been more truthful. Can’t is a strong word. In fact, it’s not a word that I used or accepted very often during my career.