A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [27]
“You must be Tyler,” I said. Then we both stood there staring at each other. After an eternity, he said “Yup” and went inside to ask his dad who in the hell I was.
The Palkos had taken in foster kids for years and when they heard my story and figured out that I was dying to get out of the Willy, they offered me their spare room. They suggested I could stay there in exchange for painting the fence, so I moved in with the intention of staying four months and ended up staying four years. They became my second family and were a blessing because no matter how uncertain my wrestling career was, I always knew I had a stable home to go back to. As broke as I was, rent was never a problem either because I only had to pay a scant $10 a day and pitch in with the chores. Since we were on a farm, those chores included chasing escaped cows off the highway, shooting invading gophers in the field, baling hay into the barn and stuffing chickens into coops to ship to the Colonel. But it was a small price to pay, as their love and kindness helped me to become as successful as I did and for that I’m eternally grateful.
Unfortunately, not everything in my life was going as well as my housing situation. In a botched attempt to make myself look like one of the Nelson twins (whether it was Gunnar or Matthew I’m not sure), I bought a box of cheap dye and ended up with a head of fried canary yellow hair. Then I hit a deer and totaled my precious Volare. But the worst was yet to come.
A friend named Shane Lanoway had moved with his family to Calgary the same time I did. I had spent the night at his house and was mowing their lawn as a thank-you for letting me stay, when Shane’s mom came out and told me that my dad was on the phone.
I felt my stomach step into a pothole because my dad had no clue where I was. Something very bad had to have happened for him to do the necessary detective work to find me.
I answered the phone and was chilled by the severity of my dad’s voice when he said, “You have to come home right now. Your mom has been in an accident.” My heart raced and I asked him if she was dead. “No, but you have to come home right now. She’s in the hospital. She’s in intensive care and she may not make it through the night.”
My dad picked me up at the Winnipeg airport and told me what had happened. A few months after my parents had split up three years earlier, my mom had started seeing her new boyfriend. Being a rebellious teenager, I was very cold toward them and whenever they came over to our house to swim or hang out, I split. I still hadn’t gotten over the splintering of my own family and wasn’t interested in trying to adopt a new one.
I was pissed when they first started dating and after countless fights between my mom and me, she finally said, “I’m not expecting you to accept this right away but I have to go on with my life. I want to be happy and you should want that for me too.”
I drove her to her boyfriend Danny’s house every Friday and then got her car and our house to myself for the whole weekend. Not a bad consolation prize for a teenager living in a broken home I guess.
My mom was in the ICU because the night before she and Danny had gotten into an argument on the front lawn of our house. During the fight, my mom charged at him and was accidentally back-dropped onto her head when she landed. She instantly became a quadriplegic. She told Danny that she couldn’t move, but he didn’t realize what had happened and he picked her up, put her on her bed and left the house. Hours later when he realized how serious the situation was, he finally called the ambulance.
The last time I had seen my