Autobiography
Brian Mix
My childhood was for the most part uneventful up until recently. I grew up the same way most kids do. Went to school. Made friends, and all of that. There are two things that I think helped me turn out the way I am now. The day I started wrestling in kindergarten and the day I learned to play the guitar. Both of these are now big parts of my life and probably will be forever.
I remember the day my teacher Ms. Height handed out the flyers for the youth wrestling program in Eyota. I didn’t even know what Wrestling was, but for some reason I knew that I wanted to do it. So I told my parents and they said sure. The next week I started practice and I found out that I sucked at wrestling but I didn’t care because I was so much fun. This is the same attitude that I kept for the next four years after that.
On my sixth year of wrestling something happened. I started to win a lot. I beat everyone I wrestled, almost. And I finally placed in freestyle state and Grecco State and got to go to the nationals for both. Going to the nationals was the biggest thing I had ever done at the time and I thought it was great. I thought it was even better when I gave the Illinois State champion a concussion and placed second in Grecco. This suprised the hell out of all my family members and it proved that I could be good if I wanted to.
I continued to go to the nationals every year after that until 9th grade when I went to the Cadet Nationals in Fargo North Dakota. This is one of the biggest tournaments in the nation for any age group. I regard this as one of the greatest achievements of my life. To qualify you have to place 5th or better at state, which I did in Grecco. Then you go to the Cadet training camp for a week before the competition to get your mind straight and learn some good techniques. This is probably the second best camp in the world, the first being the Junior national camp. Here you have Olympic wrestlers and coaches teaching you moves and many other various things.
After a week of intensive training I went to Fargo to compete. I had 65 people in my bracket. I won my first match against a guy from Florida. Then I won again against a guy from Idaho. My third match I lost to a guy from Ohio, who ended up getting 3rd in the whole tournament. Then I beat a guy from California. And on my last match I lost 6 to 7 to a guy from Washington. My dad said that I probably would have placed in the top fifteen if they had had placing that far back. I was happy to go and just win a couple of matches.
The next year I went to state in high school wrestling, but I did badly. But my Grecco career went off. I qualified to go to Sweden with the Minnesota National Foreign Exchange Teem. This is another big accomplishment in my life. So in June of this summer I went to Sweden with fourteen other wrestlers form Minnesota. It was the most fun I have ever had and I got a bunch of new friends out of the deal. In Sweden I had to wrestle 3 matches. I beat a 60 year old man and some other kid, and I lost to a 25 year old bad ass who is one of their club’s best wrestlers. As soon as I got home I went to a three-state duel meet in Augsberg and competed against the best wrestlers in the tri-state area, I basically got killed. Then About a week after that I went to the Junior Team National tournament. Minnesota took three teams to St. Louis to kick every other state’s ass, which they did. I was on the third team and we got 8th out of probably twenty teams. Our first and second teams got first and second respectively. So Minnesota really kicked but.
About a week after that I went to the Junior national Grecco training camp. This was the best camp I have ever seen or even heard of. It was also the most fun. Although I didn’t make it to the nationals I still thought it was a good achievement because I was only a first year Junior. Next year I may even place in the Junior Nationals.
Aside from my wrestling I have a few other hobbies. I like to build web pages and make computer games. I also play the guitar and am trying to start a band. I guess the reason I started playing guitar is first because my dad and his dad both play guitar fairly well so I just carried on the tradition. Secondly because I always thought it was cool. I started about a year ago and I have been learning in leaps and bounds. Now I am writing songs and trying to put a band together. I have a lead singer and kind of a bass player. The girl who is my lead singer is one of my sister’s friends named Michelle who was a foster child but now is going to live with us. She sings a lot like Jewel. We have written three songs in the past week or so. All together we have five songs. But we still need a drummer.
Ever since Kurt Cobain killed himself I have wanted to be in a band. I loved his music and his death showed me that anyone can be a famous musician even me. I now try to write like he did, using metaphors and past experience and I think it works very well. It is too bad that all my songs have to be about all the screwed up relationships and shitty girlfriends that I’ve had. Michelle mostly writes about things like being unwanted and having a crappy childhood. But the songs sound good to everyone who has heard them. We both like singing and playing together. Hopefully we will go somewhere with it and if we don’t we had fun doing it.
My life has been nothing but fun and excitement so far and I don’t plan to change it. Wrestling, playing music, making things on computers is basically all I do aside from school, and I hope to finish off my life with a career in one of them.