In the kid’s freshman year of high school a coach named Jelnick made him wrestle a fat, hairy kid named Kenny-something in gym class, and turned the kid into a claustrophobe for life.
Ten years later he got married. A slim girl with almost no body hair but it turned out that not resembling Kenny-something was not the foundation for a lasting relationship, although admittedly it was a good start.
Four years passed and the kid who was now a man had taken a position writing features stories for a newspaper in Florida, and in the course of one such feature story a man named Tuffy Truesdale—all this was a while ago and possibly not the correct spelling—talked the feature writer into wrestling his bear. The bear’s name was Victor, and the spelling of the bear is correct. Tuffy was 50 or so and had been a professional wrestler himself and was much scarier than his bear, even if you imagined him fitted with a muzzle like the one Victor was required by the Palm Beach County Health Department to wear. A terrifying presence, which in no way prepared our feature writer for the persuasiveness of the philosopher beneath.