The best part of the Winter Olympic Games is that they allow everyone to be a kid again. Just look at the events.
What is the first thing a child does when snow starts falling? They grab a toboggan and head for high ground. When you get right down to it, that’s all the luge, skeleton and bobsled races are.
The athletes who carve careers screaming down an icy tube with nothing between them and old man winter but a tiny sled and a sheen of spandex, are certifiably crazy.
But so is any kid who always wants to be the first one down the hill, no matter how fast it gets. I’ve seen kids like that, and they usually wind up with chipped teeth and costly auto insurance.
Our crazy Olympic skeleton champion Jon Montgomery is a kid like that. He’s also the type of kid who doesn’t mind taking off his shirt, and drinking a jug of beer in the middle of the street.
Another great slider, Mellisa Hollingsworth, is the type of kid you don’t see every day. At least, I never went sledding with any girl so stunning.
She was very sad when she didn’t win, and it made all the other kids sad too. You hate to see a girl crying on a toboggan hill. It kind of puts a damper on everything.
If I saw Mellisa crying at the bottom of a run, I would offer to carry her sled back up for her. That’s what we did when it went bad for someone.
It goes bad for a lot of the girls on skis too, but we generally stayed away from them. They’re wild and strong and extra super crazy, when they’re not all falling down.
When sledding gets too boring, a lot of kids graduate to snowboard. The best in the world is a goofy guy they call Red Zeppelin who can fly like no other kid on the hill.
They say he has wings, and every day he wins an event is like Christmas day for him. He’s crazy, but he’s also a millionaire, so everyone tries to get invited to his parties.
Eventually, you get tired of trudging back up the hill, so you head for the frozen pond at the bottom and strap on your skates. Just like children, speed skaters love ripping around the pond to see who is the fastest.
If you can find enough people, you can play a little shinny. It’s a game as Canadian as chugging maple syrup, but sometimes you go up against a hot goalie from out of town, and can’t score no matter what you do.
The Olympics are full of crazies, and many of them are running wild in the streets. It’s as if the children have eaten all the sugar and have overtaken the city. It’s a festival and a party. It’s the Winter Games, and it’s fun.
It actually feels really good to be a Canadian right now; and it feels good to be a kid again, even if it is only for two weeks every four years.
Enjoy it while it lasts.