Olympic Withdrawal

Our men’s hockey team bringing the Sochi Olympics to a satisfying and fitting close last Sunday is probably one of those events that every Canadian will proudly remember for years to come.  And now we can all let out a long sigh of relief and allow our lives to return to normal.  After so many athletic highlights, new records and thrilling close calls a period of well-deserved rest and quiet pride is definitely in order.  And I think our Canadian athletes deserve a little R & R and admiration too.

I know why I’m exhausted.  During the last two weeks my mental acuity, physical coordination, endurance and discipline have reached an all-time high.

With a dizzying array of TV stations randomly airing the various sports throughout the pre-dawn and sometimes even daylight hours my daily challenge was to figure out how to record the ones I wanted for our evening viewing.  I have now acquired the clairvoyance and mental agility to select the correct channel (as opposed to the one announced in the guide), the ability to determine if sufficient recording time was available, and the foresight to record the following program so that, unlike on the first couple of days, we would actually see who won the events and even catch a bit of the flower-presentation ceremony.

The major advantage of PVR-ing is that one does not have to endure the endless series and constant repetition of annoying ads.  But fast-forwarding over these and not cutting into the competition takes advanced levels of digital dexterity.  I now boast one of the fastest TV-remote control fingers on the planet.  I’m hoping this will become one of the demonstration sports in the 2018 Olympics.

The 30 km-long ladies’ cross-country ski in which a mass (that’s the actual Olympic term) of dismayingly fit (and inevitably blonde) young women chase each other up and down hills and back and forth through snow-covered forests for over an hour, or countless ends of curling with the only levity provided by the Norwegian men’s questionable sartorial choices, or hours of oversized bullet casings stuffed with 4 hairy-legged and hefty men hurtling down spiraling cylindrical ice-lined hamster-runs require high levels of concentration and the ability to remain seated for far longer than the average human anatomy can usually tolerate.  But I am confident I rank among the best in the world in the field of sedentary endurance.  And don’t even contemplate competing with me in the bladder-control event!

Loyalty to our Canadian athletes is a requirement that is easy to fulfill but every day brought new events, each with its own set of rules to decrpyt (does ANYONE who isn’t Dutch understand the intricacies of the speed-skating events?).  Each day I learned the names of yet another batch of bright young superstars whose success or failure depended on my unwavering concentration and support.  Like all true afficionados I prided myself on being able to refer to our medal-winners by name and inject arcane details of their Olympic triumphs into conversation even days after their event.

But I am most proud of the discipline I have acquired thanks to these games.  Watching a sporting event loses all of its drama if one already knows the results.  In preparation for evening viewing I would resolutely abstain from listening to the radio; all family and friends were warned at the outset of any conversation that I DID NOT WANT TO HEAR WHO HAD WON!  If I had to find a TV channel for my husband I would mute the sound and peek at the upper portion of the screen through fanned fingers.  I felt that I was at the top of my game in Olympic-result-avoidance until I made the mistake of attending the Symphony where a woman I had never met ran up to me, grabbed me by the arm and exuded:  How about those Canadian women winning gold in the hockey game!?!  If hadn’t become so well- disciplined I would probably have reacted in a rather violent manner.

So now I return to my pre-Olympic lifestyle. I’ll have to search for topics of conversation when I begin interacting with friends again; I’ll start going out of the house again (Where did all that snow come from?  I thought it was 15° outside!); and I’ll have to rely on my tai chi class and my computer keyboard for my athletic activity.

                                             

What did I do to offend the gods? And which gods did I offend?

My dear, housebound husband looks forward to an outing every day.  I have become very adept at transforming everyday errands into mini-adventures.   But some days the most exciting excursion I can conjure up is a 3-minute drive to Shoppers to pick up a jar of something we just might, one day, feel the need of.  So today’s excursion  seemed perfect:  a trip to the dentist to pick up his newly repaired upper plate.

For over 40 years he has worn the same partial plate but last year the hooks had become loose so we had undergone the ordeal of ordering, sizing and fitting a new set of front teeth for him.  Since then he has managed to break off, lose and/or swallow FOUR of the 9 teeth on the plate!  Needless to say, we are well-known at the dentist’s and have the drill down pat: I take the plate in one day and pick it up, freshly repaired the next morning.  I find it easier to perform this alone as parking in the Yonge and St. Clair area is difficult even with a handicapped sign.  But today, Harry INSISTED on accompanying me.  We got him safely to the car and set off to a recurring theme of “Where are my TEETH???”

As usual, I had made a plan that would involve leaving him alone in the car for a minimum of time; if I’m gone too long he tries to come and find me and in this weather even covered in a blanket he finds the cold intolerable.  The parking lot was full forcing us to revise our route and make an almost impossible left-hand turn onto a dug-up St. Clair lined with cranky drivers who were tired of construction and snow banks.  We managed to work our way to another parking garage and I assured Harry I’d leave the heat on and be back in a jiff. 

All went well; the dentist’s assistants handed over the little blue plastic box and I was back at the car in less than 10 minutes.  At the garage exit, the machine swallowed both my ticket AND credit card and then flashed angrily at me.  There were no buttons of any kind to push (Cancel?  Restart transaction? Call the fire brigade?) so there we sat until a human appeared to interrogate me on what I had done wrong (Uh??? Nothing??) and why we hadn’t left when the gate was up (It WASN’T up!  I wanted my credit card back!).  At that point the trickster apparatus spat my card and receipt into the waiting hand of the garage attendant who assured me cheerily this was WHY he still had a job.  (I’m so happy for him!)

So off we drove, Harry clutching the little blue plastic box and reiterating the theme of missing teeth.  So I told him to open the box.  This he did and swiftly popped the contents into his mouth.  When I asked how they felt he moaned ‘Not good’ then squeezed open his lips to reveal a gaping hole where the missing tooth was still missing!

I performed some kind of illegal traffic manoeuvre and we headed back to the dentist’s.  I did not feel up to sparring with the parking lot and smug attendant again so decided to use Harry’s handicapped sign to park on a side street.  The icy mounds of snow were 3 feet high and the pavement was dangerously narrow and snow-covered.  I ‘parked’ as best I could, wrenched the blue plastic box from Harry’s surprised hands, assured him I would be back in a jiff and scurried back to the dental office.  The entire staff stared in wide-eyed and red-faced disbelief at the dental plate with the gaping hole and assured me they would look after it – again!

As I arrived puffing and sliding back at the car Harry explained to me that I had parked in a very unsafe spot and then asked where his teeth were.  My explanation sounded as ridiculous to me as it did to him but we didn’t have much time to contemplate this as huge, 6-inch thick tiles of frozen snow cascaded noisily off the roof of my car and smothered the entire windscreen.  I couldn’t see ANYTHING so blindly inched to the side of the road much to the dismay of the line-up of cars behind me.  When I judged that it was almost safe to do so I got out and cleared away my own personal avalanche.

The thought of an impending snowstorm tonight and tomorrow morning, a repeat trip to the dentist’s and another 20+ hours of answering the question:  ‘Where are my teeth?’ have me wondering which of the many gods I have annoyed and if, perhaps, they will still be angry tomorrow, and if so, what new forms of torture will they have for me?