Post-Olympic Thoughts

The Olympics have finally ended and now I can put away the broom my husband and son were using to practice their curling. Curling? Don't get me wrong, but can you get any more bored watching a so-called sport? I suppose if the International Olympic Committee suddenly decided that dusting or tub scrubbing merited tome on the Olympic agenda, we'd see women heading for spas on Saturday mornings as men and boys in households across the nation wielded Pledge wipes and Tilex bottles with competitive aplomb.

Anyway, I have decided I could live quite happily for many more decades without ever again watching skeleton, in which otherwise sensible-looking athletes plunge head first down an ice run at speeds I've never even driven, or the speed skating group race, which requires guys and gals with more muscles than Ahnold to pat one another's bottoms on international TV. When I was a kid, our parents actually encouraged us to watch the Olympics TV coverage; we'd get up close and personal (remember grand ole Jim McKay?), learn something about dedication in pursuit of a goal; get a geography lesson and maybe pick up a few foreign words.

My kids are no different than I was; they wanted to watch every second of Olympic TV. Trouble was, I got worried what words they'd learn, what lesson they'd deduce from a "sport" called half pipe. We live on a steep hill and I swear I could see the gears turning in my younger son's brain, hoping for ice so he could skeleton. My pre-teen son actually went around declaring his love of curling. And then there was my husband -- who refused to see Brokeback Mountain -- setting the VCR to record the two-man luge and in case you don't know, this is the exciting sport in which two buff men in spandex lie down one on top of the one other before skittering down an ice run, vibrating. For the record, I myself have now seen enough figure skaters reaching up behind their head and grabbing their skate blade to last me two lifetimes.

So now that the Olympics are finally over, our family can return to its regularly scheduled TV fare; you know, educational programming, arts and cultural performances and the like.

In other words, isn't it time for American Idol?