Olympic Dreams

A few things tend to happen when you stay up late to watch the Olympics; 

you find yourself beginning to actually understand the gymnastics scoring system, you find yourself beginning to actually understand Béla Károlyi, and you fall asleep with floor routine music on your brain. All of which can lead to some very strange dreams.
We flash-forward to 2024, where a 17-year old Finley Ella Dickey is preparing to begin the women’s individual all-around on the balance beam. Her parents are in the stands acting like raving lunatics with every move she makes. Some high-pitched former male gymnast is describing her next move and everyone holds their breath as she dismounts and sticks her landing.
She moves to the uneven bars… It’s not her strongest event, being that she’s not long and lanky like the other athletes. She’s pretty much got the same build she’s got now – just imagine she’s a bigger version of her current self... Short but powerful. As she gets ready, mom can’t believe how much chalk she’s putting on her hands and is wondering what combination of spray-n-wash and detergent will get those chalk stains out of her shiny suit. It’s a fairly clean routine, but those pesky Chinese 10-year olds seem to always do better.

We head to the vault, where Finley has a slight advantage. 

Years of Dad throwing her in the air and tossing her onto the bed has prepared her for this moment. She runs down the path (not unlike she runs now) and yells “YAYYYY!” as she hits the springboard, pushes off of the vault table and does several twists and flips, pigtails flying in the air, then lands solidly on her feet. It’s a great vault and she leads the competition with one event left.

It comes down to the floor exercise and everyone is pleased that she has selected a Beatles song and probably even gets a few more points for her routine because it’s not some over-dramatic soap opera music like every one else plays. It’s a very solid routine and she comes perilously close to stepping out of bounds but, thankfully, mom wasn’t able to clip her toenails while she slept so she could dig into the mat and stay safe.
We all watch nervously as the last 8-year old Chinese girl does her floor routine and it looks like it might be a close finish until she faints mid-routine because they haven’t fed her for three days.

The cameras all zoom in on Finley as she hugs her coach and looks around for her parents who have completely lost it and are crying like idiots. During the medal ceremony, the whole arena stands to hear not the national anthem, but a special rendition of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” that Finley claps to and sings along with. When it’s all done she yells “Bye Bye!” to everyone and looks at her medal, which is actually a gold pacifier around her neck. She couldn’t be any happier.

Then I wake up and go look at her asleep in her crib. My little gymnast is happily sleeping away, with no worries at all. We have quite a long time before any sort of athletics or academics start to creep in with their pressures.

 I hope she finds something in either area that she’s passionate about. Who knows? We may have a little gymnast on our hands or we may have a future doctor. And even if neither come to fruition, I’ll be cheering her on all the way… even if it’s not from the stands at the Olympics.