Missing the Olympics

I remember having skates just like the ones shown above. I sat like a little snowball in my parka, strapping them on my shoes and then shuffled off onto the ice. I was about four years old, and very proud of myself. It was my turn on the ice. I wasn't good enough to play with the real hockey players, but we had our own plastic pucks and sticks and we sure thought we were playing. The fact that our skates had four blades on the bottom didn't bother me a bit. In fact, I believe I was in third grade before I actually got my first pair of real figure skates.

Watching hockey during the Olympics this year, I realized how much things have changed. Aging has certainly changed me. My eyesight has probably been the most obvious change, other than size. Now I can actually follow the puck better when I watch the game on the radio. Think about it. The radio announcers know how much you can see on the airwaves. The television commentators assume you can see just fine. If given a choice between being given back my high school figure or my high school eyesight, I'd be throwing away my glasses. (Could we toss in that sharp hearing, too, please? No? I didn't think so...)

I got used to staying up late, watching the Olympics. I'd sit here and think, "I can do that...in my dreams." Of course, I can also fly in my dreams. I've been doing that since I was tiny. I always figured that most people have flying dreams. Maybe you don't. I always have. To me, it's more like swimming through air than what a bird does. I don't flap my arms or anything. I glide. People below me don't know I'm there. I'm fast. I'm silent. I hear things. Keep an eye on your ceilings. I'm not sure it's not actually happening. It's not an Olympic event, though.

But the skating. I always knew it took somebody a whole lot more coordinated than I've ever been to manage what they do. By the time they're done with their three or four minute programs, I'm practically hyperventilating. And I rarely agree with the judges. Was there anyone who thought that the Phantom of the Opera skate routine wasn't going to win? Just me? Well, maybe that's why they didn't ask me to judge this year. I'm available for 2014.

So I sit here, four hours after John went to bed, wondering why I didn't save some of the Olympics to watch later. Even with as bad a job as NBC did televising them (sometimes an hour between skaters, which was really a sad way to run things) I still enjoyed watching them. Too bad they didn't organize them better for the viewer. Why did I have to watch them all during the two weeks they were on? I could have just left them on the DVR and watched them slowly over a month, made them last.

Maybe in two years, when the Summer Olympics are on, I'll try that, because almost any book I own is better than almost anything else that's on television...

Olympic Dreams Can Be Sad

Even as a child I loved watching the Olympics. Back then it was every four years, and we'd get it during the summer and then the winter of the same year. Now, of course, we get one or the other every other year. It might be better like that. For the viewers it probably is, but I'm not sure how the athletes feel. I've never asked them.

One thing is very different. There are more human interest stories now than there used to be. Back then we saw the sports and that was pretty much it. It was what we expected, and what we got. Now there's an awful lot of filler. (There are also a lot of DVRs recording and skipping through a lot of that filler...) Anyway, tonight they did a piece on the coach for the Chinese Ice Skating Pairs team. Twenty years ago they entered their first competition and people laughed because they were so bad. Now they're champions.

Obviously, I don't think anyone should be laughed at for doing their best. Where were those Olympics held? That's what they should have told us in that little fluff piece, but they didn't. They made the coach sound like a hero for being away from his family for the better part of two decades to train the athletes into the champions they are. His son is named the Chinese equivalent of "Far Away." Is that supposed to be a heroic thing?

These athletes are "picked out as children," taken away from their families while they're tiny and taken to live together in a sports facility with the coach. They live in dormitories, eat in cafeterias, and see their families only on rare and special occasions so that they might obtain this gold medal for their country's honor.

It made me sad. This isn't a heroic thing to me. Families living and loving together, driving to practice and having macaroni and cheese instead of something more expensive to save money so they can pay for lessons—that's heroic. And if you get a bronze or a silver, or even just tenth place and know you've done it with the support of family and friends, not the power of a big nation? That's heroic in my mind. And many of them do get the gold. Different priorities.

I would think the personal feelings of success have to resonate on a different level.

Lakers vs. Denver - An Embarrassment

Ever since my three sons were involved in sports, I've made it a point of honor not to badger or run down game officials. The closest I ever got was in one of our oldest son Tighe's baseball games. The ump decided before the first pitch was thrown that the other team was going to win. We found out later that he lived in the other town and had a nephew on the team. That's not what I call fair. Even had I known that then, I had my rules.

I'll give you an example from that game. There was a runner on 2nd base. It was a very windy day and Tighe was pitching. He's left handed, so he was facing first base. The wind blew his hat off and he made an instinctive grab for it. He stepped from the mound as he grabbed. The ump called him for a balk, giving the runner 3rd base. (What?) You get the idea. The whole game was like that. We lost, of course. It's hard to win when the other team owns the umpire; I'm not even sure we would have taken that game if the calls were fair. We'll never know, will we?

I do have a temper, and I'd been holding it in for the whole game, since I have those rules. However, when I reached my car, there was the umpire, parked right next to our car. He was stripping out of his gear at the trunk of his car. I couldn't resist. I walked up to him, and in a very polite voice, I said, "Don't let anyone get you down, sir. Umpiring is a very difficult job. You just keep trying, and you'll eventually learn how to do it properly." Then I got in my car, and waited for Tighe to leave the dugout and join me.

Tonight's basketball game, Lakers versus Nuggets, left me feeling the same way. I live in Colorado, and try to support the local teams. Tonight, though, it became impossible to route for Denver. They had the refs so firmly on their side, I couldn't believe it. Long before halftime I was routing for LA to beat the pants off of them, just to prove to the officials that you can't change the outcome of a game by allowing yourselves to officiate with blinders on. 

There were so many blatantly bad calls that we replayed some four or five times, just to see if we were wrong. Did we miss something? Going blind perhaps? Could they really strong-arm from behind and not get called? Throw an elbow and have a technical called on the one hit? It was disturbing. 

Tighe tells me Denver is called the Thuggets around the league because they play like a bunch of thugs. I sure saw that side of them tonight. I've been doing too much writing and music, and missing too many games. I was ashamed of Denver's sportsmanship, embarrassed by the officiating, and justified by the Laker victory.