Last week, I suggested to Maya and Mina that they have a sports marathon at a local park. It's how I spent a lot of my summer vacations as a kid. Either by myself or with my junior high best friend Yuko, epic sports fantasies were played out. I'd play tennis against a wall with a red, white and blue wood racket for hours and scheme a Wimbledon appearance in ten years. Or Yuko and I would play two-person dodgeball or granny-shot free throw contests or luge down hills while lying back on our skateboards, hugging close to parked cars. I believed for sure I'd find a sport at which I was accidentally spectacular.
For Maya and Mina's sports bonanza, I didn't have to give them many details. They loaded their bike baskets with various balls and I didn't see them until two and a half hours later when they staggered through the door sweaty and smeared with dirt.
"Ok, give me the run down of the games played," I said placing my elbows on my knees.
Maya said, winded, "First in our mini Olympics, we played Around the World at the basketball courts."
"MmHmm," I nodded. "How'd that go?"
"We didn't make it."
"Around the world?" I said.
Mina chimed in, "We were stuck in the same spots!"
"What was next?" I said.
"Then we played volleyball," Mina said.
"One on one?" I asked.
"Yea, but because we were using that plastic ball the wind blew it off the court."
"High winds," Maya said. "Then we played handball."
"Then we did gymnastics," Mina said.
"Oh?" I laughed. "How'd that go?"
"Ok," Maya said, "But then we wrestled. That was better."
"Then we raced our bikes around the track," Mina said.
I laughed after every answer at this point.
"Then we raced, running," Maya said.
"Then we found some orange cones and put them on the track and did hurdles," Mina said.
"Then we finished with an obstacle course," Maya said.
"That was the funnest because we cheated a lot," Mina said.
That sounds like the greatest mini Olympics ever.
In my own Olympic closing ceremony, I'd like to report that I did get to see some coverage of Taekwondo. First I learned that TKD is actually on the brink of being eliminated from the Olympics. I'll argue that if the steeplechase is still in the Olympics, then let us keep TKD for god's sake. The next bit of news was regarding a controversial call against our golden poster boy Steven Lopez. He lost the gold medal because of it and if that wasn't bad enough some of the sport's dirty laundry was aired when the Lopez Camp protested the call and then told the media that they were instructed by the World Taekwondo Federation NOT to protest any call during the Olympics. All coaches were strong-armed into signing an agreement of non-protest before the games began. What kind of mafioso stuff is that? Then the best coverage of TKD came when Cuban fighter Angel Matos took too long with an injury time out and the ref disqualified him. Matos was winning the match 3-2 before being disqualified. The second the match was called, the Cuban fighter ax kicked the ref in the face with laser speed. Kicked the ref in the head, I said!! As refs rushed to the ring, the Cuban cat punch them away. It was sick. We all yelled at the screen when we saw this go down. Then we spent about a half hour saying things like, "Suurrreee, that guy was hurt" and "Why didn't he just do that during the match?" "The refs should've fought back, like a 5 on 1 rumble!" "Now you can really kiss Olympic TKD good bye" to which Maya said, "No, now people will really want to watch it."
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