City Days of Burgers, Roller Derby & Wrestling in Memphis

Memphis, Tennessee (644 miles from home)

Hey Jake!

This is probably going to be one of the pages that you may get excited about cause Flat Stanley, Alicia and Janice all went to Huey’s with a big group of friends to have dinner! You know, Huey’s is a Memphis tradition. Not only do they have some of the best cheeseburgers in the city, they have places where they let people write on the walls! We helped Flat Stanley write his name there and then our burgers came out!

We also had the typical Huey’s entertainment (like them on Facebook)! Yep, the toothpicks that come in the burgers, people put them in straws and launch them into the ceiling. It’s really silly but again,  the restaurant thinks it is fun so it’s okay to play along!

We also caught the roller derby in Memphis! I’m not sure if you know what that is Jake, but it’s a sport where ladies on rollerskates skate really fast in circles. It was Alicia’s first time to go to the Memphis Rollerderby (website, Facebook) too!

To play, each team has a person who tries to score called a jammer. Each team wants to be sure their jammer gets to skate around more than the other teams. The other team tries to keep people from getting by. There is a lot of bumping into each other and sometimes people fall down! We sat in the front row! It even said danger on the tape on the floor!

Because players bump into each other a whole lot, they can get bruises. So they wear knee pads, helmets, etc to try and be safe. Although roller derby can have a reputation for being a tough sport, some of the people who derby are really nice. A friend who goes by the name Lady Problems even had her picture taken with Stanley during half-time! She’s the jammer for one of the Memphis teams and when a teammate saw us snapping the photo, she asked with a lot of excitement if that was Flat Stanley! Seems he’s famous!

As if the roller derby wasn’t cool enough, we took Flat Stanley to see Kazu’s high school wrestling tournament. It was a pretty long day – longer than a day at work even! There were wrestlers from 20 or so schools! And each wrestler got to wrestle at least twice.

This is Kazu’s first year so when he’s not wrestling, a lot of time he was watching other matches and talking to some of the people who have been wrestling longer. He’s really learning a lot! And when someone on his team would wrestle, everyone on the team would focus on the match. They would cheer for each other really loud – so would the rest of us.

In between our team wrestling, I posed for a photo with someone you should recognize. She couldn’t believe how much Flat Stanley has seen in the last few weeks! I think she wants to travel too!

See more of Flat Stanley’s adventures!

[slideshow]