Olympic Injury

 

I’ve spent the past two weeks binge watching the Olympics. I’ve watched sports that I never realized existed before. With 116 events, and 16 different disciplines, my TV was recording day and night on two different channels. I had to keep a sharp eye out for figure skating since that was my favorite. I usually had to cancel two or three other recordings to make sure that I was watching every figure skating event.

The athletes were amazing and I prioritized events that had an athlete from the USA. Eventually, I noticed that some of the athletes representing the USA were actually from another country but obtained citizenship prior to the Olympics. Also, athletes from the USA sometimes represented a different country, especially if a parent was from that country. It’s a small world after all.

During the Olympics several athletes were injured. Many of the sports are intended for the daredevils of the world. Freestyle skiing and snowboarding seem to be a combination of skill with a healthy dose of luck. Of course, ice hockey is a brawl with players wielding their sticks like swords. I thought the women were vicious until I saw the men. And I don’t even want to speak of the flying blades in speed skating.

One afternoon, I was lying back in my recliner watching the Olympics when someone knocked on the door. I used the buttons to pivot myself toward the floor and took a step and tripped over a shoe. I twisted my knee and as the pain was somewhat unbearable, I had to cancel my plans for Monday.

I whined about my injury which was minor compared to the multiple falls throughout most of the disciplines. Anyway, I have sympathy for anyone who was injured while living their Olympic dream.

  I missed Jim during the Olympics. He enjoyed them as much as I did. His favorite skaters were Katarina Witt and Tanya Harding. The only reason he liked Tanya Harding was because she could do a triple axel when no other woman could. He would have loved Amber Glenn who completed a quad axel in the Olympics.

The first time Jim and I went to see Stars on Ice it was in St. Louis. He was showing early signs of dementia but hadn’t been diagnosed yet and there was no way I was driving. A few things stand out in my memory. One was that our hotel bed had only two pillows on it, and Jim was used to sleeping with two. I dialed housekeeping for him, and he said, “My wife doesn’t have a pillow.” Which, I guess was technically true since he had confiscated both of them.

Another thing I remember about that trip was Jim getting confused and going the wrong way down a one-way street. At the arena, we discovered our seats were the highest ones possible. The skaters looked about two inches tall. I had always though that Oksana Baiul should not have won the Gold Medal in the 1994 Olympics until I saw her in person. She was magnificent on the ice.

We went to see Stars on Ice three times in Kansas City. The first time we went, we parked on a side street and had a difficult time finding our car. Jim had lost his uncanny sense of direction, and I never had one. We exited from a different door than where we had entered. When we started crossing a parking lot, I knew we had zigged when we should have zagged. Jim argued with me, but I insisted we go back to side of the building where we had entered. We came across a family looking for their car. We followed them and found out they were in the same lot where we’d left our vehicle.

The next year we parked in a side lot, but I wrote down the names of the streets and the buildings so that we could find our van. The following year, we went on a bus tour with my mom. Jim refused to take off his parka and he listened to his Walkman throughout the show, and paid no attention to the skaters, including Katarina Witt.

I miss the Jim that would have watched the Olympics with me and recorded the figure skating on the VCR if I wasn’t home. Of course, he couldn’t help himself and told me that, my favorite at the time, Kristi Yamaguchi won the gold medal at the 1992 Olympics before I got to watch it.

Good memories keep Jim close to me during the Olympic season. He would have totally babied me after my “Olympic injury,” but he would have also reminded me to leave my shoes on my feet, not underfoot.  

 

Copyright © February 2026 by L. S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

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