Even More Embarassing Moments and Why Kayaks Are Evil

As I went through Olympics withdrawal last week, I tried to figure out exactly when I started to give up on being an athlete and slowly start to embrace my nerd-dom. Growing up, I was very much a tomboy. Family legend states that on the day my parents brought me home from the hospital, my dad sat with me in front of the TV to watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs while my mom took a shower and a nap. This was their explanation for why I was so interested in sports growing up.  I really think I was just a daddy's girl and since he liked sports, I wanted to be like him, so I liked sports too. As a got older, I played basketball and softball, then that evolved into horse-back riding and gymnastics when my mom put the kibosh on my desire to play hockey. But no matter how hard I tried or how much I wanted it (or thought I wanted it) I really wasn't an athlete. I liked to climb trees and ride bikes and run around doing "active kid" stuff, but when it came down to organized sports, I could never keep my head in the game. Sure, I tried hard and put effort into playing when it came down to crunch time, but during practice or especially when put in the outfield in softball, my mind would wander. Call it ADHD the way my mind would think about anything other than the task at hand, but whatever it was, I slowly began to realize that organized team sports were probably not for me.

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Speaking of things not for me, remember running the mile in school?  Why did they put us through that? What sadistic asshole in the Collective-They-That-Plan-School-Curriculum decided that forcing children to run in front of their peers 4 times a year was healthy?   I hate running.  HATE. IT. Unless it's an emergency or I'm super excited to get to the destination ahead of me, I do not run. I always had long legs and a high metabolism as a kid, so everyone just assumed I was in shape and athletic.  But my wee body was built for sprints, not distance. Running the mile in elementary school gym class once every quarter was torture. It was my own personal hell. Eight laps around the fenced-in rarely-mowed field behind our school with our tall cranky gym teacher standing at the entrance with his stop watch, whistle, and clipboard. I was literally the last person to finish every time. Even the asthmatics and the "fat" kids ran faster than me. True story. 

This kids runs faster than I do.
He is also awesome.

The fastest girl in my class was also often the fastest person in the class as well.  Her name was Kim.  She was a bitch. She was very sporty and athletic.  She played soccer and was on the track teams.  The boys all liked to hang out with her and talk about sporty things.  Whenever I would try to join in their conversations, she would lead the charge in berating me about having "the slowest mile ever" and teasing me that I was out of shape. Whenever she wasn't around, or the boys started talking about video games, that's when I had the upper hand on her.  She would usually just roll her eyes and make fun of me even more, probably out of jealousy. Even during our yearly fitness evaluations when I would do the most pull-ups of anyone in the class, Kim would find a way to minimize my achievement by saying it was because I was so skinny that I weighed less than everyone else so I cheated. (This is of course, ridiculous logic in hindsight, even if I never weighed more than 90 pounds until high school.)

These are my kind of pull ups
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The pinnacle of my realization of my nonathletic-tivity came in ninth grade. It had been about 3 years since my diagnosis with Scoliosis, and I'd been wearing a back brace for about 2 of those years. (Middle/high school + bad perm + braces + back brace = recipe for awesome years of therapy.) Doing any physical activity other than a steady walk while having to wear a back brace for 20+ hours a day was nigh impossible, so I was excited to sign up for swim class in high school as part of my gym credit, because it meant no running, and I got to be free from my back brace for an extra hour a day. But, swimming class was a double-edged sword. I loved swimming as a kid, and I had been told that I was a good swimmer and since I was so skinny, I was very aerodynamic in the water. But, swim class was less "fun swimming" time and more "the-crazy-bitter-swim-coach-preps-and-judges-your-fitness-levels-or-worthiness-for-her-swim-team" time. Freedom from my back brace also meant judgement and yelling from the swim coach and self-consciousness of being a scrawny 14-year-old girl in her bathing suit in front of 17 and 18 year-olds. Because of the limitations of my back brace, a lot of my core muscles had atrophied, so sit-ups, push-ups and the like were embarrassingly difficult for me.

This all the heavy lifting I currently do.

I managed to survive this daily beating to my self confidence until the final week of class before we left for winter break. The lifeguard and swim coach had a surprise for us, we were going to learn kayaking! It sounded cool, until I realized that our first lesson required us to flip ourselves over and release ourselves from the kayak while upside down under water. Blame my claustrophobia, blame watching Jaws too many times as a kid, but the idea of being strapped into a plastic shell while upside down under water and being expected to free myself sounded unnerving at the very least. The lifeguard gave us a demonstration, then he strapped us all into our respective kayaks and pushed us into the pool. I watched almost everyone else flip themselves upside down and swim to the surface after releasing the elastic bungee "skirt" that held them in.  It looked simple enough.  I took a deep breath and flipped upside down with ease. In fact, it was kind of fun at first. But, the fun ended sharply. I started to feel uncomfortable and disoriented.  I tugged on the bungee cover.  It didn't move.  I tugged again.  And again.  And again.  I was running out of air and I was stuck upside down inside a kayak in a god damned swimming pool. I was not going to die like this. I panicked. I thought I could flip myself over again so I tried to do so in vain. Water filled my nose feeling like a thousand burning stinging bees inside my respiratory system. The next thing I realized, our lifeguard was holding me above the water telling me to relax and breathe. With a flick of his wrist, he unsnapped me from my bungee prison and set me on my feet in the shallow end of the pool. As soon as I got my bearings, I was extremely aware that everyone in the class was staring at me with a mixture of concern, disbelief, and confusion. My body was hot with the panic and terror of being stuck underwater, then that was immediately replaced with the panic and terror from everyone looking at me. Class continued as though nothing happened.  One of the older guys in the class was decent enough to paddle up to me and ask if I was alright and ask me how I got "stuck" in my kayak.  I tried to sound cool by saying something to the effect of, "Yeah I got stuck, it was weird ..." The older guy pointed out that I was struggling for only about 10 seconds before the lifeguard jumped in the pool and fished me out. At that point I wanted the kayak to just swallow me up. To this day, kayaks still freak me out.
Thanks, high school for all the years of therapy!




This is why I stick to playing video games.
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Olympic Fever (Spoiler)

IOC

Who has two thumbs and is a huge nerd for the Olympics? This gurl.
You hear about people having "Olympic Fever" and what-not, and while I don't go super crazy during the season, I do get excited and have been known to occasionally act like I'm an expert on a sport when I am clearly not -I call this Olympic-douche-itis. We have all been guilty of exhibiting symptoms of this at one time or another. (Don't try to deny it!) I have always loved the Olympics. I get so excited about the games months before they happen, they are one of the few sporting events I get really into. My poor DVR has had trouble keeping up with the 12+ hours of events I record at a time. There are something like 67 hours of events on TV per day on 4 or 5 different channels. It's almost too overwhelming, my brain can't take it. It's like an addiction.  I totally overdid it yesterday, though. I spent at least 12 hours trying to cram 48 hours worth of Olympics into my day. I think it fried my brain a little bit because I felt exhausted when I got up this morning to go to work.  I wish I could program the DVR to only record those events I must watch, but since NBC has it listed as a single block of time on the TV guide, I end up having to record all of it, which is fine, I will watch it all. But, if the DVR runs out of room before I get to watch the events I love the most, I will Hulk out a little. Technology, I demand that you catch up to my needs! The events I get the most excited about are gymnastics and swimming. I was a pretty good swimmer as a kid considering I grew up in Colorado, a land-locked state. But, my hands-down favorite summer Olympic event to watch is gymnastics because that's what I really wanted to do as a kid, especially after my Olympic Fever outbreak of 1992.


Not this Olympic Fever.
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The first Olympics I remember avidly watching on TV was the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. I'm sure I watched them with my parents in the years before then, but that was the first time I remember being aware of what the Olympic games were, and their importance. That was the year they really stuck with me. I, like many an impressionable young American girl, looked up to Shannon Miller, one of the U.S gymnasts. My mom indulged my sister and I by enrolling us in dance and gymnastics classes. We went to classes off-and-on for several years, not quite understanding that we were probably too old and not trained enough to actually come close to becoming Olympians, but we didn't care. Whenever I got on the balance beam or practiced my cartwheels and bridges on the floor, I imagined myself in a stadium full of people, and the podium with my medals waiting for me in the corner. But, sadly, our Olympic dreams were not meant to be. My sister lost interest eventually and pursued cheerleading instead. I tried to get serious about gymnastics and dance again after the 1996 games, but we discovered I had Scoliosis, and gymnastics just became too painful and difficult. After healing completely from spinal surgery years later, it was all but impossible to seriously pursue gymnastics again, but by then theatre had become my new obsession.  I won't kid myself, I was never going to be an Olympian.  Had I been able to stick with gymnastics, I probably never would have advanced further than local/friendly competitions; I was too old, too tall, and had not trained nearly enough. The important thing now is I am relatively healthy, and I can live vicariously through our American Olympians every four years.

This was almost too much awesome for my wee brain.
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So, last night when (SPOILER) Jordyn Wieber didn't make the cut for the Women's Gymnastics All-Around competition, I teared up a little bit for her. To watch her realization that a major piece of her life-long dream had fallen apart in front of an international audience was heartbreaking. Unfortunately, though by the nature of the games, for some to win, many have to lose. That is part of what draws us to the games.  To watch the end result of a person or a team's years of grueling work to see if their dreams come true or if they are dashed at the last moment. The drama, and the fight, and the test of the human body and spirit are why we are so riveted with these events.

All that being said, has anyone played Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games for the 3DS? Wow. I played a demo of it recently in trying to get my Pre-Olympic Fever fix. What an awful game. Now, I'm a fan of both Mario and Sonic and if you had told 10-year-old-me that the two beloved icons would appear in a game together one day, I would have peed myself with glee. The unfortunate reality is, this game is so anticlimactic, I don't even have the desire to write a decent review of it. So, here is my antiquated and very abbreviated first impression:
-It's neat to have the Mario and Sonic universes together again, but that's about the only positive thing I have to say about this game.
-The mini games are too similar to each other and are often confusing.
-The touch pad doesn't always respond how you want it to.
-The overall game play/concept really falls short of expectations for the two franchises.
-As a whole, the game was lackluster and disappointing.

Nintendo

There are plenty of reviews out there from people who played more than just the demo, but I find most of them in agreement. I understand the initial appeal of video games based on the Olympics. The Olympics themselves are such exciting events, and I think it's natural to want to relive or prolong that excitement by playing a video game where you control the action.  But in reality, even playing a video can't compare to the excitement that comes along with the actual events, I ran into this letdown after the 2010 Winter Olympics and the unimpressive video game that came out that year. That's what makes the Olympics so special: it's a feeling, an event, an atmosphere that cannot be duplicated.  But what can I say? Olympic Fever can make people do some crazy things.

Really, London? Really?
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What's your favorite can't-miss Olympic event?
What's the most disappointing video game you've played?