Olympics

As a child, I always loved to watch the Olympics. I have succeeded in passing on that pleasure to JT. Two years ago, during the 2006 Winter Olympics, he'd stay up late tucked in my bed to watch the events. Afterward, in the snow and ice on the sidewalk outside, he pretended to be Apollo Ono.

We're getting ready for Beijing by watching lots of Olympic Trials in the past week. From gymnastics to track and field to swimming, he's excited about it all. I'm reminded of the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, where Rumanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci stole the show. I was 9 that year, just one year older than JT, and when ABC showed a story of the training of gymnasts in Communist Rumania, I was impressed by the lock-step dedication and devotion. I remember asking my Dad why Americans didn't train that way. He bravely tried to explain the limits of a communist system of governance but all I could see was that they turned out a great gymnastics team. In later years, when I was in college enrolled in a class called "Problems in Communism," I would remember those 1976 Olympics with some amusement.

JT's not thinking of moving to any other country, foreign training regimens not withstanding. But the swimming trials have convinced him that maybe some swimming lessons are worth his time. Tomorrow morning he'll start those lessons and, I'm guessing, that in his imagination JT will be Michael Phelps gliding across the Middlesex pool and turning in record times.