Olympics!

So the other day at swim team practice I was toweling off next to a couple of guys who were Not From 'Round These Parts.  I was listening to their accents, like I always do, and one of them saw me and said hi.  I said, "Hi.  South Africa, right?"  "Sorry?" "Your accent.  Are you from South Africa?"  The guy kind of blinked at me and said, "Most people guess Australia." I said, "Oh, no. Not Australia."  He said, "Why not Australia?"

And I had to think about it for a sec.  I mean, to me an Australian accent sounds like a South African accent the way a Moscow accent sounds like a Belarus accent, which is to say, not at all.  But there are some similarities.  Plus, I didn't want to just say, "I know it when I hear it," even though that's also true.  Finally I said, "I think it's the vowel sounds, especially the A sound.  In Australian they're short and kind of clipped, and in South African they're rounder and, well, warmer."  "Oh," he said, still looking at me like I was an alien creature.  "In fact," I went on, "if I had to guess I'd say Cape Town."

His eyebrows shot right up and I knew I'd nailed it.  And I'm pleased to say, I remembered to add, "Well, welcome to Texas.  Have you been swimming long?"  I have learned a few things about socialization by watching my fellow hairless beach apes.

So this got me to thinking.  I did, in fact, spend 6 years training to be a classical musician (and that I wound up a paralegal in a mass torts law firm is Just Kinda How The Road Turned).  During much of that I was a youngster and I'm sure the bones in my ears hadn't ossified or whatever.  And as anybody who plays an instrument knows, there's a lot of subtlety of sound that goes into it.  Heck, even a punk guitarist probably knows how to tune that thing.  Is the string flat or sharp? By how much? A half turn or a quarter turn?  You have to turn up as your last movement or the string will go out of tune again, so how far down can you go before you need to come back up? I'm positive that's where I got the accent thing.  I spent years listening for small sounds. So is it any surprise, then, that my encounter with the Office Ghost was all sound and no visual? I don't think so.

Also, I have all the visual acuity of a rock.  When I have to imagine something, I get a muddy picture that's fuzzy around all the edges.  I got a little bit better at this when I took some painting classes some years ago, but not much.  I'm much better at imagining what something smells, sounds or feels like.  So it's maybe not the fault of ghosts that I don't see them.  I maybe don't see them because frankly, I don't see much.  Sometimes not even traffic signs.

Speaking of swimming and unfamiliar accents, the Olympics have been on for the last week, and I have been happy as a clam.  The wife and I are kind of Olympics junkies.  Let's face it, there really aren't any other things where you get to see lots of interesting sports at the same time and learn stuff you didn't know about them.  (CBS:  Bring back "Wide World of Sports"!!) Plus seeing people from all over the world and all different races and religions in the same room doing the same stuff at the same time and not fighting about it.  I mean that's pretty cool.

(Now, the opening ceremonies were really out there, don't get me wrong.  I somehow missed all the outrage where the Christian Right thought the painting of Dionysus was actually the Last Supper or some silly thing, but look, singing headless Marie Antoinettes are weird.  I don't care what country you're from.  Though, as Joan pointed out, it was all very French.)

I am a sucker for watching people do the thing that they're best at, better than they've ever done it before.  One of my favorite movies is "Sneakers" with Robert Redford and Ben Kingsley before he was a Sir.  Yeah, it was kind of forgettable, but you should look it up if you haven't seen it.  This gang of reformed criminals hires themselves out to break into a business's security, and then makes recommendations for how they can improve their security.  And there's this whole plot about unbreakable codes and the Russians and Ben Kingsley is doing something sinister but anyway, all of these guys are really good at whatever it is they do.  They do computer things (1990s tech, but anyway) or they know electronics backward and forward or they understand people and how they work in a security system or--whatever, and the person who wrote the dialogue clearly knew about this stuff because I can't understand 90% of it.  But it doesn't matter because you can just tell they really know what they're doing.  Plus there are moments of divine comedy, like when the blind guy has to drive a truck across a parking lot at great speed, or when Sidney Poiter's refined and urbane character loses his temper, decks somebody and uses the 12-letter expletive.  (And decides to take his wife to Tahiti.)  I like watching actors act really well, too.

Anyway, there's no better place for this sort of thing than the Olympics.  I can't really wrap my head around how somebody takes a running start, does a handspring, hits a springboard going backwards and then flies over a big piece of equipment while doing multiple twists or somersaults in midair and then lands on their feet and stays there, but watching somebody do that, and then do it again, better than the first time, is just beyond amazing.  And don't get me started on the balance beam.  I took gymnastics very briefly as a kid, they had one that was literally 2 inches off the ground, and I still wouldn't get on it.  Too scary.  I think the gymnasts backflip off the beam, land on their feet and say to themselves, "Thank God I'm off that thing." Never mind spinning around on one foot.  Never mind doing no-handed cartwheels backwards and landing them on four inches of wood.

Both swimming and track are awesome for something else: nail-biting finishes.  Yes, it's cool when the American wins, but it's just as cool, maybe cooler, when the Australian starts out behind, catches up to the person in front, and then races neck-and-neck for the finish line.  Or when whoever's ahead is right next to or on top of the world record line.  Or when the ending is so close that they literally need digital photos to see who won.  Or when someone almost falls or wobbles and still wins.

And diving!  Guys, a 10 meter platform is the same height as a three story building.  Most people, when you ask them to hurl themselves off the edge of a three story building, will say, "No thank you," not ask you if they should do a triple flip with a double twist on the way down. Even if you are landing in water. (You can get seriously hurt landing in water from that height if you don't know what you're doing.  I'm talking broken bones.)  The only thing more dangerous than diving is probably surfing.  The place where everybody's surfing, Tea'huapo, translates as something like "the place of the smashed skulls." I am not making that up.

One of my favorite sports, tho, is actually water polo (!).  I sometimes think about trying out for the adult water polo team that's attached to my swim club.  I always thought I'd make a good goalie. I am not a fast swimmer (I'm all about distance) but I am large, and my swimming superpower is getting out of the way.  No reason I can't turn this around and make my superpower getting in the way.  Anyway, water polo is great. It's like soccer, only in 8 feet of water, and faster.  If you haven't checked it out, you might want to.  Kudos to rapper Flava Flav, by the way, for sponsoring the U.S. women's water polo team and paying all of their training expenses when he found out some of them were working 2 and 3 jobs to be able to afford to go to the Olympics.  You shouldn't have to do a GoFundMe to go to to the Olympics and represent your country.  I'm just sayin'.

One of my other favorite sports is pole vaulting.  I dunno who decided it was a good idea to hurl himself or herself up to a height of 20 feet, not hit a bar and then fall down the other side onto his or her back. But wow.  And one of my other favorite sports is fencing.  And one of my other favorite sports is handball.  And one of my other favorite sports is break dancing.  And one of my other favorite sports is...

Well, I could go on.  But I'll stop there.  Hey, it's only August 6 and there are still 5 days of Olympic coverage left to go.  So get out there and watch, y'all.  Because it's cool. Cheers!