I am totally unathletic. Do you see that tree stump over there? It is more athletic than I am. When I was a kid, I took gymnastics classes at the park district for like, a minute. I liked tumbling and stuff like that, but I remember walking across a balance beam and in the back of my mind, I'm going, yeah, this is nice I guess, but wait - I'm sorry? You want me to what now? On a four inch wide piece of wood? But I'll fall on my head and DIE! Do you want me to DIE? And, oh, what are those things? Uneven bars, you say? And what does one do on those? Hahahahaha, yeah, right, pull the other one! I don't suppose I need to tell you, but I didn't stay long in gymnastics class.
Also as a kid, my parents attempted to get me to do swimming lessons, but it was more of same. It was okay at first, in the water with a kickboard, all like, yeah! Splashy splashy! I'm liking this, sort of, but why does it smell so weird? And then, I'm like - I'm sorry? You want me to put my face where? Under the water? I don't think so! It really, really freaked me out. I didn't actually learn to swim for a very long time, because I was (and still am) afraid of going under water. No thank you. So, you guessed it - no more swimming classes either.
In grade school, I HATED gym class. This class was pretty much MADE for people who were good at sports. So I fit right in. Ahahahha. No, not really. The teacher's pets were all the kids on the sports teams (which those teachers coached) and the rest of us shlubs were pretty much useless. While I liked playing silly games, I wasn't very good at organized sports. I was okay with soccer and floor hockey, but I didn't like playing basketball or volleyball. I wasn't good at them, I wasn't coordinated in the right way. It was not a very fun 40 minutes for me. Gym class can be scarring anyway, because kids are little assholes, and all gym class did for me was expose all my weaknesses to my enemies. I mean, sure, I rocked it out in actual academic classes, but what are brains next to athletic prowess? I remember very clearly being chosen as team captain for volleyball (not because I was good at it, I hasten to add, but everyone got a turn at being captain) and it while it wasn't like back in the day, when everyone lined up and teams were picked humiliatingly in front of everyone, it was still kind of a process, because you went into a room with the other captains and a list and chose teams that way. I chose my friends, because the ONLY way to make the combination of volleyball and gym class any more bearable was to have your friends on your team. Can I add here that EVERYONE did this. Everyone. All the little jocks chose their little jock-style friends to form one super-team. And they never got in trouble for it, even though it was, like, obvious. Do you want to know the ONLY person who got told off about it by their crazy bitch of a gym teacher? Yup, it was me. So it was like that.
High school was a little bit easier, because after 2 years, you could choose what things you wanted to play. So for two years, we'd have to do the usual basketball, volleyball, soccer, baseball, swimming thing. I had a really good strategy for baseball, though. I'd go stand out in the field as far away as possible so there was NO chance I'd ever see any action. Because during those odd times I'd actually GET the ball, I'd have no clue what to do with it, so I'd make the wrong choice and lose the game for us. Batting was also a disaster, because I'm a lefty and no one had any idea what to do about that, so I solved that by going to the end of the line for batting. Then I'd keep cycling myself back to the end. Voila!
When we were able to pick, I chose stuff like team games (with silly games like pillow polo and badminton) and social dancing, tennis and step aerobics and archery and cross country skiing. The high school gym teachers were nicer and not as obviously biased towards the jocks in the class. I'm pretty sure I got pity A's for effort from most of them. And sometimes we'd get male gym teachers who pretty much did not give a shit. I kid you not - I remember once during a tennis unit, the teacher would spend all his time at the front court with the gym "peer leaders" (aka his jock-style pets - I never did understand what these "leaders" were "leaders" of actually) leaving the rest of us on the back courts, casually whacking our tennis balls over the fence and going "oh, dang" and then ambling off the court to fetch the ball and starting the process all over again. None of this taught us a lick about physical fitness, which I gather is the point of these classes. If they had tried to teach us anything about being fit and taking care of ourselves, it would have been more useful that forcing unathletic square pegs onto the basketball court to be mercilessly mocked by their peers. (Ah, but that's another story).
All this is really building up to tell you that despite my obvious lack of athletic ability, and the deep, deep psychological scars that I have gotten from my youthful athletic endeavors, there are sports I do like to watch, if not play, and every four years when the Olympics roll around? I am glued to the screen, watching everything and anything that happens to be on. Which is a little bit weird to me.
The first Olympics I remember watching were the 1988 winter games in Calgary. Since then, I've been hooked. This London games has been no different. Since the first moments of the (long, kind of strange) opening ceremony, I have been a slave to the NBC tape delay, staying up till all hours, watching Olympic coverage, trawling the web during the day to find the all-important gymnastics results. One of my coworkers called me an Olympic junkie and it's true, I am. At no time in my regular life would you catch me turning on the tv and settling in for a game of beach volleyball. Like, never. Ever. But during the Olympics, I will sit and watch with avid interest.
I'll watch ANYTHING during the Olympics. I remember one snowy winter day, I turned the games on, just to see what was happening and I found myself getting sucked in to a cross country skiing event, of all things. There weren't even any Americans participating, but I watched anyway, all in suspense. I also tuned in for a gold-medal hockey game once, with the Swedish team playing. This summer, I've sat and watched diving and swimming of all kinds, gymnastics, cycling, volleyball, basketball, water polo, track and field, tennis, some equestrian jumping stuff, pretty much whatever's been on.
I don't know what it is that I love so much - the pageantry of the opening ceremonies? The feeling of coming together with the world? The rampant patriotism, shouts of USA! USA! (even if it's just me doing the shouting?), watching young people so amazingly skilled chase their dreams? Watching them stand on the podium with a shiny medal, singing the Star Spangled Banner (shoot, that makes me cry every time). I don't know what it is, but I love it. So, so much. I am glad that there are people so different from me, who are bold and brave and unafraid of death on gymnastic apparatuses (apparati?) or in the pool, or jumping off of three storey high platforms, because they have been thrilling to watch.
London, this has been a wonderful games. I've loved every minute of it. You should be so proud of what you've been able to do. I will miss these games when they are gone.
