World-Class Thoughts

Like so many of you, when I was younger I LOVED the Olympics. I have great memories of, while my older sister was away at camp, sitting in our basement watching the '84 games and drinking Shasta pop (a MAJOR treat) with my mom. Really, really great memories.

Somewhere along the way, though, the Olympics lost some luster. Honestly, I think it has a lot to do with the US not being as dominant as we'd like, and so when these Beijing games came upon us, I barely noticed. The Phillies are in first, after all! But then everyone was talking about the opening ceremony and how great it was and all these other things, so I flipped it on for a few hours the other night, and now I'm legitimately interested. It was pretty compelling, really. And when push comes to shove I'm afraid that I'm a Phillies fan first and a American fan second (that's kind of wrong of me, isn't it? I'd be WAY more excited for So Taguchi to rock a game-winning double off of Billy Wagner than for any American to triumph over the world -- at least I feel a little bad about it), but I've been sucked half-way in nonetheless. And here, as you may expect, are my thougts.

1) I don't care about swimming. I hate it personally (it's cold and wet, two things I'm not a fan of) and generally find it completely un-comelling. But that men's 4x100 freestyle relay? THAT was just great human drama. Especially since the French conveniently propped themselves up as the "bad guys" with their pre-race drivel, that was definitely as excited about a man moving through water in an awkward looking onesie as I've ever been. That was worth the whole evening, right there.

2) Speaking of "bad guys", I have another reason to not like watching gymnastics. Have you SEEN these girls? They're like twelve. The beauty of competition is that you want to win and that means that somebody else has to lose, and that' s great, again, especially where boastful French dudes or the Mets are involved. And I remember, in my younger years, cheering against gymnansts from opposing nations. Hoping that they'd err, or even better, fall over completely. Nothing against them personally, of course, just hoping that my country can win. At my current station in life, though, I'm completely unable to hope that something terrible befalls a twelve year old girl in the biggest moment of her life under pretty much any circumstance. It takes away from the pureness of the competition for me, the "us vs them" that helps to provide clear boundaries and indetifies us with one person or team and not another. And of course I don't watch for the pure enjoyment of the event -- I don't care how pretty people look flying through the air, I just want my country to be drowning in gold medals -- so gymnastics is ruined for me. Which is really too bad, because I didn't like it much to begin with, and they show it for 8,000 hours on end.

3) Speaking of wanting my country to be drowning in gold medals, the Olympics really does bring into sharp relief the insatiable greed of the Americans (or, at least, me). How many is enough? No number exists. If we won every single medal in the entire games except one, would we be more satisfied or less? Knowing myself, I think I'd be upset about the one that got away more than excited about the insidious domination. And knowing you, I think you might feel the same way.

4) It's nice to be able to cheer for players like LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Kobe Bryant. Especially James, who seems like a genuinely likeable guy, but as much as I admire his skill and particularly his amazing performance in game 7 of the Eastern Conferance Semi-Finals this year, I was forced to cheer -- FORCEFULLY -- against every spectacular basket he made. It's simple -- if you oppose the Green, I oppose you. So it's great to be able to get behind some of these guys rather than playing against them. They're scary to play against. And yes, by "play against" I mean "be played against by people who I've never met but wear a jersey that I associate with while I jump up and down screaming in my living room". There, now you see how scary it really is for me, right?

5) The strange differences between events are interesting to me. You can flip from swimming or gymnastics or something where the uniforms are, well, uniform to something like "beach" volleyball, where one guy has a hat on backwards and his partner has sunglasses (inside, of course). I mean, that's pretty weird, right?