The Olympics

CHAPTER 28

I haven’t received too many medals in my life, and the ones I have are usually the kind you get for just participating- like when I finished 4573rd in the Pittsburgh Marathon. But a few times I actually did deserve it- my first place winning entry “El Scorcho” in our webelos pinewood derby comes to mind… What I am getting at here are that medals, real medals that count for something, like a Nobel Medal, or a Medal of Honor, are few and far between for most of us, and the people that do get them really do deserve to gloat. Not only are most of us never going to be in a situation where we can compete for a real medal, we are not ever even going to be in a location where real medals are won, say the Nobel scientists lab, or the war-torn battlefield.

Well, even though I think some events are ridiculous, like dressage (basically horse dancing), the Olympics are one place where legit medals abound. And happily for us, in locations where the venue hasn’t fallen into a pathetic state of disrepair and neglect (most of them in Greece have), like the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, you are able to walk right out onto the field where it all happened, take your mark in your lane, and sprint around the ¼ mile track, pretending to be the fastest man in the world.