Hogan Knows Best?

When I was four years old, Hulk Hogan scared me.

When I was twenty-four years old, I told him this.

Now, telling a professional wrestler that he’s scary is one of two things. It’s either a risky move (assuming said-wrestler is still violent and needs a punching bag) or it’s an opportunity for an entertaining moment. Thankfully, it was the latter.

In fact, Terry himself (no his first name isn’t really Hulk) said he even had his own preconceived notions about me. Yes…SK! Obviously, I tried to find out what those were, but…he wouldn’t tell me.

Anyway. Back to scary Terry. His response to his frightening façade? Well… that wrestlers are basically actors. That I, at age four, was watching him act, playing the role of “Hulk Hogan.” To put it into perspective, he compares it to Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator.  (I think this confirms the widely-held suspicion that wrestling is fake.)

Naturally, the inner four-year-old is jumping for joy.

All these years I had been terrified of Hulk Hogan and he’s really just the nicest guy ever! He doesn’t want to hurt others! OMG YAY!

But before I can utter those thoughts, he asserts that he doesn’t want the mystique to go away, and that he’s still “crazy” in a scary-deep, only-Hulk-could-make voice.

When he did that, I remembered a story with him about how he once called this entertainment PR firm that I had interned at, Warren Cowan and Associates. I answered the phone and his voice, at the time, scared the 18-year-old version of me.  Apparently his then-publicist, Ian Abrams, worked at that company. We bonded over this mutual non-friend.

Anyway. Since we’re on this whole preconceived notion kick, I had to ask him if there was one rumor about him that was totally false… that he wanted to clear up right here, right now.

He tells me how people THINK  he went to a camp for juvenile delinquents called the Sheriff’s Boy’s Ranch. However, that is fiction. Fact? He went to the Christian Youth Ranch, where he played guitar every Monday nights at Bible study, accepted Christ, played basketball and video games and yeah…. Pretty much the opposite of a camp for teenage hoodlums.

He mentions guitar playing, so then I ask him about musical influences. Obviously, he knows my age, so he tells me I’m not old enough to know them. He then brings up Aerosmith, and I fire back…saying that I obviously know Aerosmith, and share my “Steven-Tyler-groped-me” story as proof. He then laughed, and told me I was horrible (I’m not sure how to take this.)

However, since he laughed, I had to once again ask about what his preconceived notion was about me. Once again. He didn’t answer. But he did tell me he was wrong, that that was a good thing, and um… that he was glad he was wrong.

Ummm so all we know is that he thought I was a horrible human being. I blame terrorism.