Going for the vanilla!
With only a 16-day schedule, the 2016 Summer Olympics are more than halfway over. I have watched several of the competitions, though I will admit I could name only a few of the 35 approved sports. My favorites are soccer, beach volleyball and gymnastics. Other than soccer, which I love to watch with my own soccer-playing children, I don’t really know why I prefer those sports.
This year, Team USA took an early exit from soccer, and I haven’t seen much of the beach volleyball televised. But with all of the (well-deserved) hype surrounding Simone Biles, gymnastics has been well-covered and shown, so I have seen a good bit of those competitions.
Aren’t those girls something?
To be so small and yet so powerful is incredible to me. To be able to use the strength of your own body to propel yourself into the air to heights twice your own stature is amazing. But then to be able to cause yourself to twist, turn, bend and spin – all at that height in mid-air – and then land on your feet? It is truly remarkable.
And then there is me. I like to think I might have been coordinated enough to compete at some level in some sport at some point in my life. However, that ship has sailed. (Far, far, away. And the captain abandoned the ship at that harbor and is never coming back.) My heyday is done. Now, the only tumbling I do is accidental and is guaranteed to leave a mark.
However, if the Olympic committee could see fit to consider some other sports in the future, my own chances of Olympic participation might stand a little taller.
Sports like croquet-calisthenics. In the middle of a rousing round of croquet, each player uses his or her mallet to extend stretches, lift weights and deepen lunges. But stop the lunge before the knee starts to crack and pop. That could be a career-ending injury.
Or how about fast-pitch bocce? In normal bocce, the goal is to toss your ball toward another ball in the center of the court and try to be the closest. But when you are terrible at that skill, sometimes it is fun to wind up and release the ball as if you were pitching a softball game. Just remember that the ball is a bit heavy, and a shoulder injury is possible. And so is breaking a window, if you’re not careful.
Finally, I suggest operatic pop-song singing. This is where you take a popular song, sing it with your best opera voice, and try not to sound like Dory when she calls to the whales in “Finding Nemo.” This is less of a sport than the others, I acknowledge, but it does take quite a set of lungs, and an ability to laugh at yourself.
And then, instead of gold medals, I’d take an ice cream cone. Maybe a double-decker one. Ooh, in a waffle cone. Yeah, that would do it.
The best part is, I don’t have to wait another four years to win again.
Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.