The Summer Olympics open later this month in London. Athletes from all over the globe will vie in over three dozen contests. There are competitions in everything from archery to sailing. At least three involve riding bikes; six use balls, and some contenders will ride horses or sail boats, or paddle canoes. It all sounds horribly exhausting.
Many of us here in the Golden Triangle are wondering just how those Olympians gather the energy to take on such Herculean tasks. For heaven’s sake, surviving summer in this part of the world is a feat of Olympian magnitude. We deserve medals for endurance. I am suggesting a few contests in which we might excel.
Sprints
People from other places often ask about the heat here and suggest that we are somehow better-equipped to handle it because we live with it, and are used to it. Wrong! We go from air-conditioned house, to air-conditioned car, to air-conditioned store, theater, church, whatever. The goal is to move as quickly as possible from one to the next. The trick is to do this with as little effort as possible. The one with the least amount of perspiration (or, in the case of ladies, “glow”) wins.
Swimming
The humidity is so thick that we often feel like we are swimming through a swamp. That, however, is not the case. For those of you who are lucky enough to have access to a real pool, God bless you. The rest of us must use our ingenuity.
Children may run through a sprinkler or play with a hose (that’s hose pipe to those of you who speak New Orleanian). Adults have it a bit harder. I have at least two adult girlfriends who bought kiddy pools. They dragged them onto their tiny apartment patio, filled them with water and lay there for hours. This makes swimming laps impossible, but who cares?
Fencing
Southern fencing has nothing to do with epees. It involves leaning on a backyard fence and gossiping with your neighbors. (The usual chat is about how very hot is, and comparing this year’s heat with others in our memory.) Southern fencing does include “foils”; not the sword kind, but the tin foil that we use to wrap up offerings from our kitchen to give to the neighbors. They love that! So, in this case the top prize is silver, not gold.
Weightlifting and wrestling
These two are combined, because they often go together, such as the weight of lifting groceries or other purchases, and wrestling them into the house. This is made more complicated because there are time limits on moving from your car door to house door. Anyone who can get their stuff into the house in less that three trips wins. These days nothing seems to come in really convenient packaging. The purchases must include several two liter soft drink bottles, 20 pounds of pet food, and a bag of charcoal.
Modern pentathlon
In the Olympics, the modern pentathlon involves rushing from one totally unrelated sport to another. Oh, forget it. Southerners would never do anything so silly. Anyone who thinks so is just “touched” in the head.
Southerners excel at so many things. You may want to add some competitions to this list. We are certainly the world’s best cooks and iced tea drinkers. And don’t forget writers. Maybe we have produced such wonderful authors because it is something that we can do without breaking a sweat. And, why bother? We already have “gold” in our name. We do not need a fake gold medal.
Adele Elliott, a New Orleans native, moved to Columbus after Hurricane Katrina. Email reaches her at [email protected].
Adele Elliott, a New Orleans native, moved to Columbus after Hurricane Katrina.
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