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I've been working on a quilt while we watch the Olympics.

ME: *passing in front of the TV with the quilt to get to a place where I can lay it out* Scuse me, sorry. Just be a minute here.
DAD: Oh, that's all right. It's not like the Olympics only happens ONCE EVERY FOUR YEARS.
ME: Well, I manage to make a quilt about once every FIVE years. I got you beat.

Past Olympic Snapshots

I went to one actual Olympic event when they were here in Salt Lake. I don't even remember what it was specifically. I think it was the Men's Longass Ski Trek. It was surprisingly unmemorable. All I really recall was that it was chilly, one guy seemed to be having a ski malfunction, the audience had enough cowbells to make Christopher Walken question his commitment, and that later they had to take away the medalist's medal because he was using a hack, or whatever it is Olympic gamers use to cheat.

It was tough to avoid Olympic Fever when you could see the Olympic torch from your house, though. My aunt got totally into it and wound up going to all sorts of events.* It was all anyone in school talked about--scandals like the obligatory figure skating judge debacle and That One Time Mitt Romney Almost Committed Political Suicide By Saying The H-Word were big news. Everyone simply had to get these really strange fleece berets because the Canadian American okay that makes more sense team had worn them and I thought it was ridiculous, but somehow we each wound up with one. I suspect my aunt.** I for one obsessively read Dave Barry's daily writeups on them because god help me Dave Barry is hilarious.

One night my brother and Dad went downtown to try to get into the Women's Short Track. (You know, as spectators.) They hunted around for the scalpers who had been everywhere for days, but after like an hour and a half couldn't find anyone willing to sell them absurdly-priced tickets. Just as they were returning to the bus stop a Mysterious Dude appeared and bestowed upon them two tickets for super cheap. They sat in the section with a bunch of people who had just scored tickets and were feeling pretty good about themselves, and a bunch more people from the Netherlands who were feeling pretty good about themselves and about how Utah had relaxed its alcohol laws and about life in general, and watched Chris Witty win the gold.

My brother also got to see the medal ceremony for curling. His school had the tickets. Each of the area schools had been given tickets to specific events, and that was the year the three of us were divided between elementary, junior high, and high school. My sister's elementary got the closing ceremony tickets.

And my high school? Well, I say I only went to one official Olympic event. The other event was the Paralympic opening ceremonies.

The nice thing about the Paralympics is that the parade of nations is way shorter, so you can get down to business more quickly. We were sitting in the section where the Finnish and the Spanish athletes were, and as the music played we danced in the aisles with them. I liked watching the Jumbotron's ASL translators. And I have a very strong memory of one funny little thing. We were all given little penlights to shine to make the stadium look cool. They were white, but I also had a green one of my own with me at the time. I looked across the stadium and amidst the sea of white lights I saw another green one. So I flickered my green one and the other person flickered theirs back and we had a little moment of green-penlight-solidarity. Hi, green light person, whoever you were. I remember you.

It was a surreal couple of weeks. And it all comes back to me every time another Winter Olympics comes on. I still question the wisdom of having them here, but as long as they did happen here, it made for some interesting memories.


Fun Fact: Given that we had some freshly-minted Post-9-11 Paranoia, this was a really paranoid games. We had a running joke about security guys hiding in every bush and trash can, and there were metal detectors everywhere. The detectors became a problem because everyone had bought collectible and useful Olympic pins, and it hadn't occurred to anyone until too late that the pins were, you know, made of metal.


*She even managed to get into the figure skating, and I'm still not sure how. Nobody could get into the figure skating events. The tickets were insanely expensive and got bought up right away, and then the scalpers made them even more insanely expensive.

**I just recently threw mine out on account of it had fallen to the floor of my closet and was irreparably stanked up in the latest plumbing disaster. It's okay. I still have my "Hablo Español" pin, a snowglobe, and for some reason an Olympics-themed cast-iron skillet.