My surprise mixed in with embarrassment, and I quickly tried to turn over to get up. It was hard. Like, really hard. At first I started to get frustrated, but then I looked over at Shanti, who was covering her mouth, trying not to laugh, but her laughter was coming out in snorts, and even though I wanted to be mad about it, I couldn’t help but laugh myself. Snort-laughs were funny, after all.

Finally in standing position, me and the guy squared off again. This time, I wasn’t going to be lured in by his mesmerizing frolicking. I knew I could charge and smack him out of the ring no problem, but what would be the fun in that? Instead I started to whirl around in a circle as fast as I could (it wasn’t very fast), like a slo-mo tornado, and pummel the air with my fists. I could hear the crowd laughing, which was encouraging. The other guy took my cue and started doing the same thing until we finally connected in the middle of the ring and just kind of leaned into each other while continuing to twirl around—two dancing, green blobs, slapping at each other with our chubby arms.

After about ten seconds of this, we both collapsed to the grass in a mountainous PVC lump. My insides hurt from laughing, and I could feel sweat dripping into nooks and crannies no one needed to know about.

“Looks like our dino-wrestlers are too pooped to push anymore… It’s a tie!” the MC announced.

Once Shanti had helped to peel the sticky suit from my disturbingly damp body, she said, poker-faced, “You ever thought of doing that professionally? You seem made for it.”

“Ha-ha,” I replied, wiping the sweat from my neck.

“It did seem like you were having fun, though.” She handed the suit to a very excited, tall person.

“Yeah, it wasn’t that bad.” I was surprised by how true this felt.

“Thanks for being game. I can tell lots of this stuff isn’t really your thing. Fair to say?”

I ruffled my shirt to cool myself off and collected my jacket from the ground. We started walking back toward the house. “Definitely fair.”

“Well, then… it’s cool you’re doing it anyway.”