Here comes the boxing story. It is about my grandfather, my father’s father, who was a farmer help, eating pig grease on bread while he was listening to the rain falling on the roof. He slept on the attic of the farm on which he was working between the two world wars. He met my grandmother, he was lucky, because she treated the food coupons in such a way that they could be used more than once. So, directly after the Second World War my grandfather was strong enough to go boxing and becoming a champion. He really was, and my father was born nine months after it, not a sporty type at all. At twentyseven he thought he was too old to play a game of soccer. Maybe he was, he died at the age of fiftyseven. A sniper and a harbour laborer, searching the meaning of life in pubs near that very same harbour. I was searching too, he gave me little drops of gin, to be sure I would not become an amateur in life.
At twentythree I weekly attended a ladies boxing class. The class consisted of a group of women between fifty and sixty. It was thirtythree years ago, I thought they were really old and though boxing away on the bags and each other, dancing on their feet and shaking their botox. They assured me that they were straight men lovers, one said to me: if I was a man I would go get tons of ladies flat. She did sound very fanatic as if something was bothering her.
I frantically concentrated on my upper cut. The trainer, a former professional, said it was a pity that I hadn’t started younger. I would have been a champion.
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