Swim Team

I called my parents on Sunday night to let them know that their granddaughter helped win the Vermont State 8 & under freestyle relay title. It was quite an accomplishment for a kid who, until last Monday, jumped into the pool off the starting blocks (while holding her nose) rather than dive. And her competitors, ages 8 and younger, weren’t a bunch of dog-paddlers either. They could really swim — and do things like flip turns.

But rather than gush forth with congratulations, my father asked, “Why are you making her do this?”

“This” being swim team.

“Uh, because swimming is a good activity for kids,” I stammered. “And it’s really helping to improve her strokes.”

“And her friends do it,” I added when he said nothing in return.

After another pause, I said, “And it’s a good group of kids.” Longer pause. “And she can swim far now.” Pause. “So if she fell out of a boat in the middle of a lake, she wouldn’t drown.”

“Safety is a good reason,” my dad finally said.

Yes, safety is a good reason to learn to swim long distances without touching bottom, or clinging to the side. But his question ate at me the rest of the evening. Why were we making her do swim team? He made it sound like a forced march.

My dad is the smartest man I know — Harvard educated and winner of at least one Latin prize. He has read everything written by Shakespeare and can tell Mozart from Beethoven in just three notes.

But to my knowledge, he has never done anything against a stopwatch (to my knowledge, he was never timed listing the declensions of the demonstrative pronoun hic, haec, hoc). While he’s active and fit for a 76-year-old — and very competitive on an intellectual playing field — he has never seemed to understand why anyone would enter an athletic contest.

He has called athletes such as Michael Phelps and Roger Federer genetic anomalies and does seem to enjoy watching them compete. But us mortals? There are better things we could be doing. Winning a freestyle relay — or the Leadville 100, or the local tennis club round robin — won’t solve the world’s problems (not that the Latin prize will). Winning — or even participating in sports — doesn’t give us a better understanding of the world, although international competition does give us a small window into other cultures.

But what I’ve realized over the past 30+ years of competing in everything from rowing to alpine skiing (and not terribly well in any of them), is that athletic competition, and the rigors of training for it, gives us a better understanding of ourselves.

Yes, sports make us fit and allow us to eat as many cookies as we want, and they offer a chance to single-mindedly pursue a goal — usually among friends and/or teammates.

But there’s more to it than this. When we push to our physical limits — and beyond — it strips away all the superficial layers of our personalities, all the barriers we have constructed so people won't see our true selves, and exposes who we really are. I’ve learned more about myself — and more about what parts of my character need shoring up — by being dropped by Olympic cyclists Jeanie Longo and Rebecca Twigg than I ever did holed up in the computer lab writing a masters thesis on the bio-denitrification of drinking water.

I learned what hard work really is, because while we can hide our grades behind the veil of confidentiality, we can’t hide crossing the finish line five minutes down on the leaders, or losing a tennis match 6-0. The scores and times are there for all to see.

And when we do win, we can hold our heads high — higher than we can if we win the spelling bee or math tournament … or Latin prize. In face, it’s the opposite reaction. I have vivid memories of hunching my shoulders up to my head, as if I were a turtle trying to hide, after winning spelling bees in grade school. Athletes are heralded. Smart kids are teased. Thick glasses and general lack of hand-eye coordination didn't help.

Next time my parents call, I will tell my dad that Sam did swim team because she’s good at it. And in the future, if kids taunt her because she wins the math quiz bowl, or because she can spell floccinaucinihilipilification, or because she drops a pop-fly in a P.E. softball game, she can remember that she is the Vermont State freestyle relay champion, or at least a quarter of it.

And should she fall overboard or capsize a canoe, chances are she’ll make it to shore.

Home Theater

On Mother’s Day, Andy walked into Best Buy to purchase a battery charger and walked out with home theater.

“I saved $45,” he stated, as I walked up to him at the cashier’s desk.

“It's too good a deal to pass up,” echoed the cashier.

“I bought the same system last week,” chimed in a salesman standing behind the cashier.

I glared at the salesmen, then looked back at Andy. “What are you going to do with it?” I asked.

The last time Andy played with a home theater, he installed a "soundbar" underneath our gigantic TV, which he purchased two years ago when I was away on business. I found out about this new TV when Sam squealed into the phone, “Guess what, Mom? I got to ride in the front seat of the car today!”

She was 6, and the TV filled the entire back end of our Toyota Highlander with the rear seats folded down.

“What’s wrong with the TV’s built-in speakers?” I asked Andy when he purchased that soundbar.

“Nothing,” he said. “The soundbar will just improve the audio experience.”

Audio experience? I never thought of TV as offering an “audio experience.”

After installing the center soundbar under the TV, he was intrigued that only the TV voices came out of it, while the rest of the noise emanated from the TV’s built-in speakers. I couldn’t tell the difference.

Surround sound is another matter though. It feels like a home invasion. I don’t want Jon Stewart to sneak up behind me or feel as if I’m in the front row at American Idol.

“You’ll like it,” he kept insisting. Just like I like the high-definition TV, he reminded me. OK, so yes, we can see the tennis ball when we’re watching Wimbledon. And the fact that Maria Sharapova has acne scars on her chin.

Standing at the cashier in Best Buy, I let loose with a volley of passive-aggressive teasing: “Ah, nice battery charger” and “Happy Mother’s Day to me.”

He exhaled, then declared: “I’ve wanted this for years, and I’m buying it.”

OK, then.

I didn’t speak much at dinner. I was quietly fuming that I never just saunter into a furniture store and purchase new sofas — granted $200 home theater speakers are a far cry from the cost of new living room furniture.

In our 11 years of marriage, the only furniture I have purchased is a $29.95 faux suede ottoman at Bed Bath & Beyond. It sits in front of a musty hand-me-down leather chair from my in-laws.

Andy isn’t bothered by our mismatched, musty furniture. It’s well-built furniture, he insists — better than what we could buy at the local Sofas-N-More. Left to himself — with no wife or child to accommodate — he could live in a cave, as long as it had a big-screen HD TV, cable, one comfortable chair, a refrigerator, the fastest Internet connection available, and a shower the size of a locker room. Oh, and a bed. With a TempurPedic mattress and pillow.

And home theater.

Of all his tech-y purchases, this one just hasn’t worked for me. Watching baseball the other night, I kept thinking I heard a cat fight and hit mute to see where it was coming from. It took three tries before I realized it was the fans at Fenway cheering from the mantelpiece. Then, watching the Grey’s Anatomy season finale, I heard a droning sound that was either a helicopter overhead or the furnace about to explode. Mood music, I realized, the second time I hit mute.

And yes, Sam has asked us to turn down the TV so she can sleep. At that low volume, I can hear the droning and the cat-fight-like sounds, but not any words being spoken.

Mostly though, I’ve kept my complaints to myself. Without Andy’s tech savvy, I would own an unreliable PC infected with viruses, a 10-year-old cell phone with no texting or email capabilities, and a 25-year-old TV with 13 push-button channels and no remote.

But if sofas came with built-in speakers, would I have new furniture too?

Ex-Palined

Writing an article today, I mis-typed the word 'explained.' It came out 'expalined.'

I kind of like it. It describes the current state of the GOP.

What a waste

Taxes are due soon. Should I skip the IRS as middleman and just make a check out to Edward Liddy at AIG? Or maybe Merrill Lynch's ex, John Thain, would like to freshen up his living room using more taxpayer money.

Tell you what, Mr. Thain. I'll send you two lovely sofas, upholstered in what I call a midsummer-night's dream (deer leaping through flowered trees against a dark navy background), and you can send me a couple of those $87,000 guest chairs.

I'm sure you'll love these fine sofas that currently clash with everything else in my living room. For they were purchased 30-odd years ago by the man who once held your job, and who, when times were tough for the company, refused to let his son make copies on the office Xerox machine. It would be a waste of paper and toner, he said, and those cost money.

That same son asked if he could have the sofas when his parents downsized from the house where they raised five kids to a smaller condominium. Why waste them? They're comfortable and well-built. They're just out of style and hideous.

What happened to executives who didn't like to see waste - -guys who thought more about the bottom line than buying $1,400 waste cans? Or is fiscal responsibility as outdated as leaping-deer-print upholstery?

A modest proposal: Family Class

When my daughter Sam was 18 months old, we made the mistake of flying from Albany, New York, to Las Vegas — nonstop. It was like traveling with a chimpanzee. Contained in a metal tube for six hours with no understanding of her personal space — or anyone else’s — she wanted to run up and down the aisle. And she screamed when we tried to distract her with all the toys we had lugged on board.

When we did walk up and down the aisle with her, she grabbed the other passengers’ drinks off their tray tables before we knew what was happening. She giggled and shrieked and tried to climb into other peoples’ rows. And at one point, she escaped my grasp and beat on the cockpit door. It was only six months after 9/11, and I expected a couple of F-14s to force us down in Wichita. And then I expected Congress to pass a bill forbidding children under the age of 5 to fly on commercial aircraft.

When we did land (in Las Vegas), I swore we would never get on an airplane again until Sam was 18, even if it meant driving home (or buying a home in Vegas and living there for the next 16-½ years).

We did fly home — on a red-eye, so she slept. And since then (Sam is now 8), we have traveled without offending fellow passengers (we hope).

But sitting in Dulles International Airport at 5:30 a.m. on a recent Sunday morning, trying to doze after a less-than-restful red-eye returning from a business trip, I was reminded again that young kids do not get the whole air travel thing. They don’t want to sit still, they don’t want to wait, they don’t want to be pulled from their warm beds at 4 a.m. to make a pre-dawn flight. On Dulles’ concourse C, one little girl screamed so loudly — from 5:30 a.m. until 7 a.m. when she boarded a flight with her parents (or were they her kidnappers? hard to tell) — that I was just about to start screaming too.

In a time where airlines are cutting back on everything from legroom to free toilets, I offer a modest proposal: Family class.

Not all flights would have Family class, just ones with the special retrofitted airplanes. On these planes, the rear third would be a wide-open bouncy-castle-type space. No seats, no seat belts, no luggage racks. Nothing but four walls, a floor, and a ceiling all lined with of soft, poofy cushion of air.

Turbulence? All the more fun as it helps kids bounce higher. Take off and landing? Who needs seatbelts when you’re surrounded by soft walls.

Between flights, this cabin would be misted with Chlorox.

Flight attendants would be teenagers and/or former preschool teachers, and they’d wear whistles. As for an in-flight movie, you bet. Nemo and Madagascar would show on a big screen TV that would slide down from the ceiling. Kids would just lie down on the soft floor with their blankies, stored back by the bathrooms during bouncy time.

On the ground, every concourse would have a soundproof Family room manned by more teenagers. And flights with Family class would never depart earlier than 9 a.m.

Then the middle third of the plane would be a first-class-like cabin for parents. Amenities would include free drinks, noise-cancellation headphones, or better yet, those industrial-strength ear protectors worn by the ground crew. Seats would recline fully and have footrests. Flight attendants would be trained in massage.

OK, so yes, the cost would be prohibitive — to both retrofit the airplanes and for the tickets. But some parents would definitely pay. And then they would ask the pilot to fly around the world twice while they slept.

As for the rest of us, we can always buy those industrial-strength ear protectors. The gift shops should sell them next to the travel blankets and neck pillows.

S-not such pretty pictures

I was at Stratton Mountain today for a photo shoot and learned that there's probably a story behind every pretty picture in a magazine. 

My story begins on the coldest day of the year (so far) with a very nice Austrian photographer I'll call Klaus. Klaus had called the night before to remind me to “be bright.” So I arrived at Stratton carrying three coats — the brightest I could find in the closet, including a cantaloupe-colored jacket purchased at like 99% off several years ago. But before he had even seen one coat, Klaus tut-tutted my lime green ski boots. They’re 10 years old, and I paid ungodly sums to have them custom fit. They’re hideous, but comfortable. 

So off we went to the ski shop, where they fitted me with silver Rossignol ladies' boots, complete with fur trim, and some Rossi skis, which turned out to be great skis. If only my feet hadn't been swimming around in the boots.

Then we trotted off to another fancy ski shop to borrow a jacket, because "cantaloupe" and "pool blue" weren't what Klaus had in mind. A Vanna-White-type woman with a German accent took a $500 red Marker coat, complete with rhinestone in the zipper pull, off its hanger and found a hat to match.

"You'll be varm in zat," she announced. But "zat" wasn't exactly the most insulated coat in the store. She also announced that it was "MINUS zhirty-two" at the summit. ;l/......./.;¬¬¬£££££££££££££ (WHOA--cat on the keyboard)

I wanted to wear an insulated coat underneath but wasn't supposed to look fat. I also had to leave the face mask and neck gator behind. Can't make it look cold and unpleasant for the nice readers! Same with mittens. A big thanks to whoever invented those hand-warmer thingees. I should have shoved a couple extra in my underwear. Oh, and I wore big girly earrings with my earlobes showing, so that felt nice in the frigid air.

So we started skiing and Klaus, reminded me to smile. Except my teeth froze. I'd duck behind the coat's collar when he wasn't shooting to stay warm, but had to purse my lips so as not to get lip gloss on the collar. And once behind the collar, my breath formed frost on my upper lip, creating a frosty white mustache.

Then my nose started to run, so I sniffed and snuffed to keep it from spoiling the $500 coat's collar. A few minutes later, as we sat on the chairlift, I noticed that when I exhaled, a fine mist of snot sprayed gently down onto the coat. 

After a few easy runs, Klaus headed for the moguls. “Turn here,” he said pointing to some huge mounds of snow separated by ice.

“OK, I’ll try,” I said from behind the now wet collar. “I’m not the best mogul skier.”

And I wasn’t. "Should I hike back up and try it again?" I asked.

"Yes," Klaus nodded.

I hiked four times for retakes. Donna Weinbrecht I'm not.

"It vill get you varm," Klaus kept saying.

Yeah, and it will also get more snot on the coat. 

So I'm not sure if he got any good shots or not. But I somehow survived with no frostbite, and there’s a red Marker coat -- infused with phlegm -- for sale for half-a-grand at a ski shop in the base village.

YouTube? Or MeTube?

Skiing the other day, I saw a guy with a video camera strapped to the top of his helmet. I rolled my eyes (behind my goggles). What was this guy filming? His ski day? As seen from his eyes — or rather, from the top of his head? Was he going to use up bandwidth sending it to his buddies? Or post it on YouTube?

Perhaps I was subjected to too many slideshows as a child and an uncle who would take 12 photos of the amaryllis in bloom, each from a different angle. I’ve always found the “how-we-spent-our-summer-vacation” slideshows and home movies not only dull but selfish. If you’d like a trip down memory lane, please wander there yourself. I once dated a guy who would set up a slide projector at parties and then would show pictures of his latest rock climbing adventure. We watched slide after slide of his backside, as he worked his way up some cliff.

His roommate called it the “Me Projector.”

Now, with cameras in cell phones and digital video camcorders, everyone seems to be recording their every move. In July 2006, YouTube reported that 65,000 new videos were uploaded daily, with viewers watching more than 100 million each day. And that was two years ago.

While it’s hard to determine how many of these uploaded videos are professionally-made — music videos, clips of The Daily Show or Colbert Report, or old footage of Robin Williams doing stand-up on stage — most I would venture to guess are posted by people like helmet-cam guy.

And Dave, the World’s Greatest Chef  (it says so on his apron), cooking southern fried chicken in his kitchen (or someone’s kitchen).

And a girl named Zexy, who was filmed making Jell-O.

And the parent who filmed kids playing violin, a video that has mercifully only had 96 hits.

The first video uploaded to YouTube, on April 23, 2005, was titled, “Me at the zoo.” In it, a kid talks about what makes elephants interesting. They have trunks. Thankfully, the video lasts only 18 seconds.

With most of these videos, there is nary an editor or producer in sight.

I can understand the parents and grandparents of the violinists wanting to see that video. And I’ve had a few good laughs watching Sadie, the farting bunny, which is worth all of its five seconds. And all the funny cat videos. But what are the rest of these videographers — and their stars — hoping for? That Steven Spielberg will ask them to direct his next movie? Or that Warren Miller will underwrite their next ski video? Or Rachael Ray will invite them to be their guest host?

Or are they simply saying, “Look at me!”?

Jet decimates flock, only two survivors

by Branta Fowl

New York, N.Y. -- A flock of geese, bound for the warmer waters of Charlotte, N.C., was almost wiped out by an airliner which flew directly into the V-shaped flock in the air north of New York's La Guardia Airport. Only two geese survived.

Both landed safely on the Hudson River.

Having sustained damage to its engines, the airliner also landed on the Hudson.

"We didn't even see it coming," said Loosey Goosey, who flew on the outer fringes of the V. "Mother Goose took a direct hit and fell immediately. Fred and Gertrude were sucked into one engine, Eggbert was pulled into the other. It was awful."

"All I saw were feathers flying," said Canada, who was flying next to Loosey in the formation. "It's so sad. Those planes should honk or something.

Both Loosey and Canada are awaiting another flock before continuing their migration but say they will not return to the waters near the airport.

The International Committee on Safe Migration is planning a full investigation.