Olympic Memories and Excitement

Have you been watching the Olympics?  I have.  I'm hooked.  I'm such a dork, I get excited to watch them (both summer and winter) every other year.  To add to my dorkiness, I enjoy watching the parade of countries at the opening ceremonies because I always learn about a new country (seriously, am I that uneducated?  I had to pull out the itouch and google a few places this year;  I had a globe as a kid, but I'm not sure what happened to it.  I am contemplating putting one of those decorative globes on my wedding registry).  And I like watching how many athletes are competing from each country (Places like Bermuda, and a few countries in Africa that have under 5 and various nations with 7 seem so small compared to the 559ish that the US have or the 300-560 that various European nations have).  Sadly, I missed watching "Queen Elizabetth II's" skydive, thank goodness for YouTube so I could watch it later.  I was talking to my friend about gymnastics last night and she mentioned someone from the '92 Olympics. I didn't think I started watching then, but after giving it some thought, I think that was the first summer Olympics I paid any attention to.  My best friend and I use to play "Olympics" that summer.  We both had pools so we would swim across the pool pretending we were at the Olympics.  I could freestyle and do a bit of a backstroke, but no way could I butterfly well so I just pretended.  I picked freestyle as my event.  We'd dive too at her house (I didn't have a diving board), I think we added the cannon ball as one of the Olympic competitions when we played.  Hey, I all ready told you I was a dork, we didn't have a lot of video games growing up, we had to use our imaginations.  My favorite Olympic sport though was synchronized swimming.   If I were to ever compete in the Olympics (and I fully recognize that will never happen), that's what I wanted to do.  Of course, I still think those women are part mermaid because they can sure hold their breath for a LONG time.  But anyway, this sport combined two things I really liked--swimming and dance.   I also enjoyed watching (still do) swimming, diving, and gymnastics.  In 1996 I paid more attention to the Olympics, who could forget that gymnastics team, but over the next couple of Olympics I also started watching more sports, even sports I didn't necessarily have any interest in.  I'd never paid attention to rowing, kayaking, etc, but here I was watching.  I never felt synchronized swimming got enough attention because I could rarely find it on tv, but I watched what I could when they televised it (we didn't always have cable so I couldn't necessarily see every event like you can nowadays, a quick peek at the tv reveals right now I could watch volleball, fencing or soccer right now, and if that's not enough I could on-demand any previous events).  One or two Olympics ago, I also started liking beach volleyball, still do.  And this year, for some strange reason I've been intrigued by water polo.  It's not a sport I really know anything about, but I keep coming home from work and putting the tv on while I'm making lunch and water polo always seems to be on, so I've found myself watching it and wanting to learn more about this sport.  Oh, and in case you didn't think I was a big enough Olympic dork before, I was supposed to have plans with some friends this Saturday night, but a bunch of people can't make it.  I was bummed at first, but then later I thought, hey that's more Olympics for me to watch.  hee hee.   So yeah, I'm enjoying the Olympics again this year, minus some of the commentary, but I will save that for another blog.