"Don't worry about your faces, none of you will ever be models" - a constant refrain from our wrestling coach. The purpose was to motivate us to use correct form (face close to the opponent's body) during a take-down drills without concern for the inevitable wear and tear on our faces (actually, one of us did become a model and soap opera star).
Over four years of wrestling I experienced all kinds of maladies: jammed fingers, split lips, a torn ankle, and an assortment of contagious skin infections. The one I dreaded most, however, was cauliflower ear, a puffy disfigurement of the ear. I was certainly having no luck with the ladies in high school, and I didn't need any more marks against me. Is anything more important to 15 year-old?
Given the daily wear of intense practices, the inevitable finally happened. One night I glimpsed in the bathroom mirror with a growing knot in my stomach a definite puffiness. Even me.
At least, it could have been must worse than what I had - one night in bed after a prior wrestling practice I touched to where by upper ear joined my head and found blood - by ear was literally being torn off.
Other afflicted wrestlers spoke of going to the doctor to get their ears drained - I was never sure what exactly was filling the ear - and at least a couple times I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, poking my ear with a pin. Nothing came out, but I had heard there was only a short time window for treatment. Afterwards I could only focus on the preventative and I henceforth always used protective headgear at practice.
I just checked in the mirror, and sixteen years later I still have the faded signs: my right ear is definitely less "defined", with a bit more puffiness in the upper part of the ear lobe. Luckily, you can only really tell if you immediately compare one ear to the other - by itself it doesn't look so out of the ordinary. Moreover, as I move into my thirties, there are so much other aging-related wear that my ear is, in the scheme of things, small potatoes.
I was pleased to see the video NBC hosted in which USA wrestlers talk about cauliflower ear. Even within the elite, it is seen by some as either a disfiguring scar or a badge of honor, but it is so common that it's just accepted as going with the territory. As Jordan Burroughs says at the end of the NBC segment, "Once you get it you're like, screw it, I'll just keep it for the rest of my life".
I smiled with a certain nostalgia when he added, "I just can't be a model".
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