Un-Olympic Events

I've lost count of my many Un-Olympic events that I have failed to earn a medal.

It is Olympic time - summer games 2016 and a friend of mine had challenged all of us on FB to list our Un-Olympic events that failed to earn a medal.  This challenge made me remember a lot of Un-Olympic events in my life from: 'walking out the front door' (I get hurt a lot walking out the front door) to 'walking in saddle shoes after a rain storm'.  So, today a friend, Doug, tagged me in an awesome comment about a 41 year old gymnast currently competing in the Olympics and her tough vault which ended in her landing too hard and going forward and turning that disastrous landing into a somersault. I jut know that she meant to do that. It was all in her planning - I know it. Okay, maybe not, but she saved it! So, that landing made me remember my Un-Olympic event #5,498.

Picture this: Gymnastics, for gym class, at Mounds Park Junior High School -  1973 - 8th grade with one of my dearest friends, Linda S. Our gym teacher thought that Lindy and I would do great at gymnastics, so she had us work at whatever we wanted to do for extra credit for the class. Lindy and I played a lot of sports together: softball (eventually going to Nationals 5 years later), flag football, floor hockey, and volleyball (she was by my side when I landed on the volleyball and fractured my ankle - ooo, another Un-Olympic event, spiking the volleyball during warm ups and landing on it with your foot) and I was at her side when she dove into the pool and scraped the bottom of the pool with her nose (yet, another Un-Olympic event created by us). I helped her tape her broken nose (hey, we saw this on TV) so she could play softball (National tournament) and together we created a paste of baby powder and Noxzema to soothe our very sun burnt shoulders so we could wear our bras and polyester softball uniforms to play softball in the 200 degree Georgia heat. Neither one of them worked, but hey, we were in this together.

So back to 1973 and 8th grade gym class and our attempt at being gymnasts. We tried all of the gymnastic things - balance beam (yeah that didn't work), acrobatics (nope), parallel bars (couldn't lift ourselves up) - just think of the gym scene in Grease, where Danny Zuko is trying to get his letter and find a sport he could do - that would be the two of us in the middle of all of the gymnastic apparatus thingies. Our gym teacher, Miss Anderson, decided that Linda and I would be great at the vault (considering our epic performances on the other gymnastic apparatus, this one would be a piece of cake ). So, we were ready and psyched. We were the only two in the gym on the horse/vault and taking turns spotting each other.

We actually didn't do so bad, in our minds, until Lindy decided to be super girl. I had jut finished my klutzy attempt at running and hitting the whatchamacallit that you jump on to leap onto the horse and then do your thing in the air and hopefully land on your feet on the mat. My thing was surviving the leap. There was a whole lot of giggling from us as we were attempting to be gymnasts. And there was a whole lot of landing on the mat and flying forward on our faces as the other one was trying to catch the flying one to avoid injury. It probably looked more like a wrestling match as we tried to catch each other and ended up rolling off of the mat onto the floor. Then came the epic super girl attempt by Lindy. She took off running at super speed and leaped off of the jumpy thing and had perfect 10 form and with her arms in perfect form, her body lined up to make a perfect jump,landing and....then it happened: she flew right over the horse and landed in my arms and we both sailed off of the mat and rolled across the gym floor still holding on to each other for dear life. As we laid there on the cold floor, in our lovely two toned blue one piece gym suits and white knee highs, with our arms still wrapped around each other, We both decided right then and there that gymnastics was definitely not our sport. We stood up, brushed ourselves off and together decided we were sticking to softball and walked (possibly limped) out of the gym side by side. We didn't look back.

And, here is the video of the 41 year old gymnast from Uzbekistan, that brought back the memory of my attempt at being a gymnast. Thank you Doug for tagging me in the post to see this. Thank you for making me laugh, I needed that.

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/oksana-chusovitina-attempts-dangerous-vault-olympic-final