Yes.  As a kid, I watched professional wrestling.  It was a chance for me and my older brother to bond.  We would watch the matches, and afterward, my brother got to try out all of the wrestling moves on me.  The sleeper hold does not really put you to sleep, but I did discover that it made it awfully hard to breathe.

My favorite matches were the tag team matches, and the best tag team matches to watch were the ones that involved wrestlers who pretty much wrestled as a tag team: The British Bulldogs or the Hart Foundation are two tag teams to come to mind.

The partners knew every move that they each made, and they beautifully choreographed their matches.  These wrestlers were real athletes and acrobats.  It was actually more than just beating someone into a pulp….in a steel cage…..with a steel chair….and the steel plate inside the arm sleeve.

But, it was actually watching these fabulous matches that I discovered that Professional Wrestling was fake.  Every match was always the same.  The bad guys, who were always way bigger than the good guys, would get one of the good guys into their corner, and start beating this poor trapped wrestler till the wrestler became almost semi-unconscious.  The play by play announcer would start to criticize the referee for allowing this to go on.

Then, the beat up wrestler, in a valiant effort, somehow makes almost makes it to his corner to tag his partner, and just inches away, he gets pulled back into the other corner for another vicious beating.

After five minutes go by, and you wonder why this guy is even alive, he somehow gets the intestinal fortitude to make it to his corner and he tags his partner.  Yay!!!

But….oops!  The referee did not see the tag, and he now firmly takes control admonishing the tagged partner to go back to his corner.  Meanwhile, his poor schlub of a partner is again pulled back to the opposing side’s corner where he gets his third beating in the course of 20 minutes.

After this “two on one” mugging, any normal human would be placed on a stretcher, and the ambulance would take him straight to the hospital.  But, our hero somehow manages to get a sliver of energy to finally slip out of the clutches of death,  make it to his corner, and finally tags his partner.

On a scale of 1-10, the partner has it turned up to 100.  He flies over the ropes into the ring.  He clotheslines one bad guy.  Then, another.  Then a flying dropkick, and another.  Little birdies start flying over the bad guys’ heads, and he grabs the two bad guys by their hair and bashes their heads together, noggin to the noggin.  Everyone is going crazy and cheering for their hero.

The “fresh” new guy then makes the tag again.  His partner has completely recovered from the three beatings and is totally rejuvenated after a three-minute rest.  He finishes the business, and pins one of the guys who are now down while his partner chases the other bad guy away.  The match is over.  The good guys win!

Why am I telling you this?  Because this is actually what we wish for.  There are so much CrankaTsuris for which we are on the receiving end, and then causes us to release our own CrankaTsuris, it would be our fantasy that even after getting double-teamed and triple-teamed with CrankaTsuris from others, and even after this happens over and over and over again, if we can only just make the tag with our partner, who, by the way,  just finished drinking a case of Red Bulls (with the sugar), and then, they can make everything right with just a few flying dropkicks.

It is more likely that your partner was also stuck in the wrong corner, and getting a bit beaten up.  You are both completely depleted.  There is nothing left.  And, there may still be a TyrantoCrankaTsuris still there with lots of energy to let out even more CrankaTsuris because they got into the refrigerator and drank the case of Red Bulls (with sugar).

Think about this.  Neither person is feeling safe, and there is one truth about this situation.  When someone does not feel that they are safe, they are more likely to cause harm.  So, this is an important time to become tag team champions.  Begin to choreograph the moves, anticipate the CrankaTsuris, and most important, name the CrankaTsuris.  Name the CrankaTsuris you receive, and the CrankaTsuris you want to give.  Have your partner do the same.

Once you know all of the CrankaTsuris out there, each person will know when to make the tag.  Practice this with compassion.  No tag team has ever become champions unless both partners had compassion for the other when they were in trouble.  And that is even when it is all fake.  Life, of course, happens to be very real.

“So we learned to be careful not to express our inner TyrantoCrankaTsuris or TyrantoKvetchaTsuris too often.  Just the right amount to keep the planet happy and not too cranky.”