Torch Dropped

I am not an athlete. I know this about myself. Now, I do wish I were more athletic in general, but I have come to understand that I do not aspire to be an athlete. A musician may or may not show the same dedication as an athlete. It takes practice to get to Carnegie Hall, but a guy who gets bombed every weekend and plays the ukulele at 3 AM is still a musician. I was a musician and still pick up and play things, but I am not an active performing musician. Anyone could be into sports. That does not make you an athlete. An athlete is different. I think nothing is more exemplary of the peculiar nature of an athlete than this past summer’s Olympics, in which the world was enthralled by the dedication and perseverance of…well, I don’t remember his name. But lets call him that guy with the metal things for feet. He had suffered some mishap that resulted in the loss of his feet, and he competed in the Olympics with a pair of springy metal things. The world was inspired and, as I just said, enthralled. Count me out of the world for this one. Here’s the thing: say one afternoon I was shopping at Von Maur and riding the escalator when I began to feel faint, and then I fainted, falling on the escalator. Not down it, but just falling back. And I was wearing shoes with too long laces. As the escalator reached its end where the steps go flat and into the floor, they catch my laces and suck my feet into them, mashing my feet up to the ankle into a pulpy shredded mess of blood, flesh, and bone. I briefly snap back into consciousness, shrieking an un-Godly howl, but promptly go into shock and unconsciousness again. Some time later - days perhaps - I awaken in the hospital, where an emotionally flat doctor, I think from India, informs me that my feet have been amputated, but as they were able to do this below the knee I should be able to walk again with prosthetics and much lengthy rehabilitation. I am not sure what might go through my mind at this point. Maybe I might wonder, “Where’s my underwear?” But I am pretty damn sure I would not first think, “I have to run in the Olympics.” And for pretty good reason. That being running in the Olympics after getting your feet cut off is mental. Without feet, one would still wander the planet into a ripe old age, even bouncing around on what look like a pair of leaf springs from a 67 Firebird. I might think something like “what am I going to do for a living in ten years?” If a violinist got his hand cut off – say the fingering hand – I think they would be universally practical and sell the violin. They might take up percussion, or slide guitar, and still play music. But they wouldn’t probably start asking Dr. Bombay for the bionic hand and an audition at Julliard. Just a guess. I don’t rule out one day that being an option. I hope so, yet I worry that the re-attachment point would be less suited to stress, maybe resulting in the fake feet sheering off mid marathon. People who go deaf can benefit from cochlear implants, so if you love listening to the ballgame on the radio, there you go. But a true athlete will hear none of this, nor will their parents. Olympic athletes and their parents – who don’t just stumble into Olympic training programs with their kids accidentally – regularly, subject themselves to rigorous and stressful routines. These routines often involve your child not living with you anymore while in grade school, intense workouts that delay sexual development, social retardation when around people not involved their sport, obsessing with their physical appearance, and familiarity with sexual predators. But, they don’t worry about paying off student loans, so maybe that is good. After the Olympic competition period of their lives has passed – sometimes by 15 - they can have reunions where they swap stories of their depression, psychiatric counseling, drug and alcohol abuse, how they are coaching some kid now and those special competitions way back, like the one where they had a group encounter with Usain Bolt. And they can remember that guy with the metal feet. No, I am not an athlete, and with age I grow more uncomfortable with every wistful Bob Costas report that I am pretty sure is supposed to be inspiring to me, but only makes me think of the Ottoman Empire raiding Christian villages for young boys to be taken and turned into efficient killing machines that would then turn around in 20 years and kill the village. The ratings for the Olympics have been trailing off for the past couple of decades. The novelty of seeing them may have gone the way of networks telling us the program we were about to watch was in color. Their height seemed to parallel the economy running low in the past, like Tarzan being wildly popular in the depression. But they were up again for this year's. Times is tough, but I did watch more this year, what with the women’s volley ball camera angles and the guy with metal things for feet.