Synchronized Illness
This weekend I mentioned to Carly that my throat was being a little bit weird. It hurt, but only when I spoke. "Well," I said, "if there's a time to be sick it's now, so then I can stay home and watch the Olympics."
Huh. Interesting planning.
Because, see, it seems like my Psychic Illness Barrier has fallen (or at least become somewhat permeable) because just as M'ris is getting better, I'm falling ill. I'm not terrible right now; I'm rather functional, in fact. And yet I'm feeling bad enough that much of my internal monologue deals with how much I'd like to go home right now. Which I would if I could, but I have a Big, Important Meeting on Thursday for which I must prepare materials, the precise nature of which are not quite known, so rushing home to collapse on the couch with a pillow and a cup of tea and the Olympics is sadly not a plan I can enact at the moment.
To make matters more interesting, the throat is only getting worse, and it's the kind of sore throat that does bad things when I talk, like something in my throat is ripping or breaking with much pain. In an attempt to save my voice and prevent any more of the pain, I've been talking rather quietly today. Yet despite the fact that I don't look good today, at all, and am whispering, people just think I'm being odd. I've had to explain, no, I'm not trying to be irritating, I really just can't talk any louder. Funny how "Ah, Karina's being weird again" is what people think rather than "I wonder if she's okay."
Also: synchronized diving. Who thought of this sport? It's just a made-up event, really. Which isn't to say that I don't enjoy it--it's surprisingly fun to watch people flipping about like that at the same time--but it does seem kind of unnecessary. Either that, or we should just create a whole lot more synchronized sports. Synchronized gymnastics seems the obvious choice. Synchronized floor exercises for sure, and maybe some synchronized uneven bars. Or we could branch out a little more, get into something that doesn't involve flips. I don't see the point of something like synchronized pole vault, but admit it, it'd be kind of funny to watch.
And speaking of synchronized diving, I ended up watching some of the events on CBC and some of them on NBC for reasons I can't remember. Now the CBC's diving commentator woman is slightly irritating because she's very critical. Course, she seems to know what she's talking about, but man, sometimes she comes down on the divers harder than the judges. The NBC commentator woman, on the other hand, was stretching as hard as she could to try and find anything positive to say, especially when the American pair botched a dive. "Well, you can see how at the beginning they were right in time, getting good height, turning into a great pike position--"
For a moment I channelled the CBC commentator: "That was a miss."
Posted by Karina Sumner-Smith at 1:34 PM
6 Comments:
Funny, Erin was commenting on the same thing yesterday, only she expressed the opinion that from now on, every Olympic event should be synchronized. Synchronized weightlifting, synchronized judo, synchronized skiing, synchronized hockey...
Seems to me the obvious olympic sport to syncronize would be fencing. Wouldn't that be cool to watch?
Sorry you're not feeling well.
By 
Philip Brewer, at
10:09 AM
I do rather enjoy the thought of synchronized fencing, actually, though (like synchronized hockey) the actual execution makes very little sense. Maybe pairs fencing?
Though instead of fencing, what I really want to see is dueling! No matter who touched whom first with a sword, most of the time, if they'd been using actual swords with actual sharp points, both people would have been skewered ... which kind of defeats the purpose, I think. Now dueling--that would be fun! (Or maybe I just read too much fantasy. That, or Mary Gentle's 1610 has already begun devouring my brain. Dammit.)
By Karina Sumner-Smith, at
2:47 PM
Um, if you had synchronized fencing no one would ever get a point, at least not in foil, because all of the touches would be simultaneous and therefore thrown out.
And I remember my first fencing instructor telling us about some club where they wore goggles and some other face coverings instead of masks but it left their foreheads and cheeks open or something, and the idea was to get scars. This sounds very silly to me, as a short person who gets hit in the mask rather more than she would like, but to each his own.
--(Thomas's friend) Em
By 
, at
11:00 AM
Um, if you had synchronized fencing no one would ever get a point, at least not in foil, because all of the touches would be simultaneous and therefore thrown out.No, I know. But think of it more like doubles tennis than synchronized diving--four people fencing at one time. The idea is interesting, but like I said, the execution makes very little sense.
Speaking of not making sense, if I saw someone with a facefull of scars that they happily attributed to their fencing hobby, I'd think that they were a dreadfully careless/clumsy fencer. But I do understand the idea of each scar telling a story, if that indeed is a motivation for this (even though it seems like cheating to invite the scars rather than having it happen by accident). Though I'd rather like to get rid of the scars on my face (according to pictures, I had really great skin when I was eight or so), part of me would be sad to part with them. Here's the one that I got from the chickenpox, and here's the one from a wooden bedframe, and here's the one from my bedside table, and here's the one when my Oma and Opa's dog clawed me in the face...
By Karina Sumner-Smith, at
1:11 PM
I think for doubles fencing epee would probably work best, as foil and sabre have right-of-way rules that make things confusing enough when it's just one-on-one. How you would deal with stopping the action I've no idea, but actually come to think of it I seem to remember hearing about something where it was four people fencing at the same time, one pair fencing another, so I suppose it's possible.
I love my friend's description of sabre: scream, fleche, hit something, give the point to the scarier one.
-Em
By , at
7:41 PM
