The Olympics

The Olympics were grueling. Long nights holding my breath while Shaun White somersaulted out of the half pipe, Lindsay Vonn flew past the gates and Kim Yu-na perfectly executed her triple axel-double toe loop. Early mornings reading a recap of the previous night's events in the New York Times sports section, a section whose sole purpose prior to the Olympics was protecting the floor from wet boots. No preparation could have spared me the toll these two weeks took on my body.
Worse than the physical trials of the Olympics were the emotional demands. Eating my oatmeal, I sobbed, reading about Joannie Rochette, the Canadian skater whose mother died two days before the competition. Drinking my decaf, I broke out in hives worrying about what would happen to Kim Yu-na if she lost. Would she abandon skating and become a computer programmer? Would South Korea assassinate Mao Asada, Kim's Japanese rival, if Mao won? I couldn't sleep fretting about Rachel Flatt's advance placement tests.
For two weeks, mesmerized by the athletes' death defying maneuvers, I nevertheless had two major questions:(1) What sadistic lunatic thought up these tricks? Did someone say,"It's not dangerous enough to go down a 5000 foot mountain at 90 mph on two pieces of wood. Let's have them do flips in the air while they're at it, so they can really kill themselves." Or, did someone propose, " Snowboarding is boring. Let's make it interesting by having them do somersaults 50 feet in the air, so that if they land badly they'll be permanently crippled." Or did someone suggest," Ice skating is for pussies. Let's add impossible jumps, so 99 out of 100 performances will result in a fractured limb."
And (2)Were these athletes spawned by asexual reproduction? What mother would permit, let alone encourage, her offspring to engage in an activity that could easily put him in a wheelchair for life? (It wasn't because of discrimination that there were no Jewish competitors.)
Last week,as the Olympics drew to a close, I performed my version of an Olympic maneuver--the double toe loop-single klutz--when I tripped on the bow of the extra long laces of my hiking boots, executing a perfect landing on the 77th Street station platform of the Lexington local. It was an unplanned invention of a new Olympic event that mere mortals can excel at--the throw me for a loop.