Learning to Love the Olympics – Modern Pentathlon, Included

By Fred Bruning

Aug. 11, 2024

     Any thoughts on the Olympics?

     I haven’t been watching.

     And it’s not just because of events like ribbon twirling, wall climbing, 3-on-3 basketball or one called Modern Pentathlon, a madcap mix of horse riding, fencing, swimming and – the best part – a 3,000-meter run during which athletes pause four times and shoot at targets with a laser pistol.

     Big-audience Olympic competition – gymnastics, track and field, high-diving – doesn’t interest me, either, though my wife, Wink, and I were at a pizza place with giant TVs when Simone Biles executed a number of fantastic tumbles and mid-air flips, so, hooray for Simone, and all her gold medals, but, by and large, I can’t identify.

     “She’s something,” I said to Wink, returning to my mushroom slice.

     Disinclined to twirl, climb, dunk or deploy a laser beam, I don’t see myself in the Olympic picture.

     But I’ve been wondering if maybe there’s more to it than that.

     The participants are a special group – young, fit, focused, determined, remarkable, unique.

     Let’s face it, excellence is intimidating.

     “There is something curiously boring about someone else’s happiness,” claimed the novelist Aldous Huxley, a grumpy view of life, for sure, but one that also pertains to another person’s success. 

     Maybe Huxley was just in a bad mood after, “Brave New World.”  Who wouldn’t be?

     Even so, we all can recognize the petty impulse he describes – to discount and downplay the next guy’s achievement.

      Are you cheering the triumph of the human spirit when gazing upon an abstract Picasso or Pollock, or muttering “big deal, where are the trees?”

     Do you shout, “hats off!” for a Yo-Yo Ma cello performance or fall into despair recalling botched attempts at “Turkey in the Straw” during years of piano lessons under the tutelage of dear Mr. Herbert, who often seemed stricken by alarm and regret.

      “Did you practice?”

      “Once, while we were watching Milton Berle.”

      This is basic stuff.

      Taken to the extreme, you wouldn’t go to a Broadway show or read a Wordsworth poem because the level of performance is beyond your own.

       A word on poetry, if I may, just for a second.

       Most throws me. Turns out, I’m more or less a limerick sort of guy.

       Here’s one I wrote for Wink on our 60^th anniversary that recalls cross-country trips and a cream-colored VW camper:

       Used to be us,

       In a Volkswagen bus,

       Traveling from New York to ‘Frisco

       Now it’s a Subaru,

       But still me and you,

       We’ve lasted longer than disco!

       William Blake and Christopher Marlowe can relax, right?

       Now that you can see the sort of sophistication at hand, let’s get back to the subject of the day which may be nothing more than Deadly Sin No.6, envy.

       Is that what stands between me and the Olympics – the distressing spectacle of someone else’s outstanding achievement?

       Could be.

       I mean, just because you can’t field grounders, does that mean you stop watching baseball?

       On 69^th Street, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the neighborhood team would meet Saturday mornings at the sandlot between 7^th and 8^th avenues, in hopes another schoolboy squad showed up for a game.

     While every sizzler went through my legs, Michael Kolk, over at short, was snagging whatever came his way. “Hit another,” Mike would say.

     This was embarrassing for a stout 13-year-old hoping to replace Jackie Robinson at second base when he retired from the Dodgers but he – I – recovered.

      Now I fly a Mets flag outside the house whenever they win and spend most summer evenings tuned to Channel 60 rooting the Metsies into a playoff berth.

     Yes, for sure, excellence is intimidating because it comes rarely and with difficulty. If we don’t make the grade, we’re apt to dismiss the effort.

      But that’s a mistake.

      I don’t have to watch the Olympics to admire the effort, the athletic achievement, the single-mindedness and sacrifice required for success.

      The games end today, and I’m offering a belated round of applause to all winners, and runners-up, as well. Maybe I can’t identify with the Pentathlon crew but I can salute their dedication, endurance and laser beam sharpshooting.  

         Perhaps now I’ll lift my sights, too.

         I can see on a Bay Ridge map that the sandlot is still there.

         Is it too late to go back and start practicing grounders?

          Previous Invisible Ink posts at: https://fredbruning.substack.com/archive