Olympidiot

How did I not know this before...my husband hates the Olympics.  Who hates the Olympics?  Really?  Seriously?  How do you hate the Olympics?

I love all the cheesy back stories on the athletes and the warm feeling you get watching someone stand on the podium to grab their gold and listen to their (boring) anthem.  No surprise here, I love the sap. 

I used to LOVE watching ice skating.  I remember watching skating then taking my roller skates (now called quads for you youngins) down to our scary basement and reliving the dream.  A good program is a little bit of magic...OK a little bit of magic set to bad music, but special none the less. Oh, don't get me wrong, there is also something awesome about hearing the "awwwwwww" from the announcers and the audience when the skaters splat on the ice too.  Heheh.

I remember being 8 and watching Mary Lou Retton from my couch.  Magic.  Since then, I always try to stick my landings and throw my hands up in the air like a good vaulter if I'm jumping more than a few inches off the ground...yea, I wish I was kidding.

I will even watch sports I never heard of 6 minutes previous to sitting down on the couch.   Rhythmic speed skiing?  Sure, I'm in as long as one of the athletes has a sibling with a heinous disease or horrible childhood and I can listen to their plight for the next half-hour.

I always wonder how these people found their sport.  Really, how do you know you are a world class luger?  Or, what I REALLY want to know...how do I know I wasn't meant to be a world-class luger and just never had the opportunity?  I could be living the dream!

I get that if one of your parents ever did it, you get to take a shot at that sport too.  That seems right.  But what about all the kids of parents who sit on their couch and watch the Olympics?  How will they find their sport?  Or what if you try to be good at the wrong one?  What if you think you are a great skater and you give it a whirl but if you had ever put on a pair of skis you would have been impossible to beat?

There are just too many variables...unless you are from China.  There they have your DNA analyzed in-utero and you are put into a training program on your way out of your mom's yoo-who (or in China yu-hu).

My daughter was watching skating last night and she looked over to me and out-of the blue said "skating just isn't going to be my sport mom."  I thought that was profound.   (Considering the girl can hardly take 10 steps without tripping over herself, I also knew it was true.)   I then asked her if she knew what her sport was yet and she looked and me and said "Ummm, maybe soccer, but I'm only 6, so maybe I'll change."  Brilliant.