a heart tugging olympic story

Well, I have just had a non-stop busy week, so I haven’t had much time to watch the Olympics. Tonight when I was having my weekly chat with my father, he said, “I can’t believe you’re not watching the Olympics! So many human interest stories!” It did kind of make me feel like I was missing out so I’ve got the Olympics on and I’m going to work on some Olympics-themed blogs. For at least the next hour. Then “Mad Men” comes on.

All right, since Dad likes the human interest stories, I guess I will write one for myself. That sort of touching story they play before the competitions. I don’t know if they still do that, since I haven’t watched the Olympics since last Sunday, but if they’re still doing it, here is the narration I would like Bob Costas to read:

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The United States’ greatest hope in table tennis almost didn’t make it to the Olympics. When she was just a toddler, she went into the backyard and got into a garbage can full of leaves. As she lay there, wondering how she’d get out of the can of leaves, a cow started mooing. Mooooooooooooollllly, the cow seemed to moo. Moooooooooooooooooooooooo. Which Molly took to mean, you must train to be an Olympian.

Molly overcame an important obstacle that day, which was getting out of that can of leaves without being eaten by a cow, which is a good thing because if she hadn’t, then the world would have been deprived of her table tennis prowess. But she didn’t pick up a paddle that day. In fact, she immediately forgot what the cow had told her, for she was only a toddler and was in trouble with her mother for wandering off and getting into a can of leaves.

Molly took another path, not yet knowing that her destiny was Olympic glory. When she started showing promise in reading, her parents groomed her to be a contestant on Wheel of Fortune. Sometimes they would write her letters while she was off at sleepaway camp, and the letters wouldn’t even have words. It would just be a bunch of dashes, and Molly would have to figure out the message by guessing consonants and buying vowels. She ran out of money and couldn’t buy any more vowels, which is how she missed her ride home from camp.

Molly’s greatest challenge was spinning the wheel, for one thing because she was so tiny and it was hard to reach down there. Also she was scared that she’d get injured by all those spikes that are sticking up, because if you don’t get your hand out of the way real fast, those things will hurt you. Also she just didn’t have a very well developed arm. To build up her spinning arm, her parents gave her a ping pong paddle. Little did they know they were putting her smackdab on a path toward her Olympic destiny.

Little Molly was an unpopular child, because all she wanted to do was play Hangman and word games and she was really, really good at them. But Molly didn’t care that she had no friends, because she had a DREAM. She certainly would have been a million dollar winner at Wheel of Fortune, even though they don’t even have million dollar winners. She was just that good.

Her dreams of Wheel of Fortune victory turned sour though. She started answering math questions with letters. She started having recurring dreams that Vanna White would reveal the letters, only to reveal decapitated heads. The decapitated heads were nice, overall; they’d tell Molly she was doing well at the game and that she had picked a nice outfit for television and that she would probably win a trip to Miami if she kept it up. But as nice as the decapitated heads were, it started to throw Molly off.

Molly had lost her focus and was losing her grasp on her dream. One time she ran into Pat Sajak at the airport. It should have been the beginning of a dream come true. Instead, she called him Alex Trebek, threw up all over his shoes, and stole his chicken nuggets. The police found her in an airport newsstand, tearing pages out of magazines, throwing them in the air, and yelling, “letters for everyone!”

Since Pat Sajak got a restraining order, Molly couldn’t go on Wheel of Fortune. She spent days and days in bed, getting out of bed only to go to college. At college, Molly showed up to a party and noticed that all the drinking was being done from cups on a table. It was a game of beer pong. Suddenly, Molly remembered that cow. Molly picked up a cup, and a paddle, and started playing a beer pong of her own devising. No one else at the party was very amused, but Molly’s road to the Olympics had finally started.

Fast forward some amount of undetermined time, and Molly is seeking redemption at these Olympic games. Not athletic redemption, though, because she really never had any failures. I’m just saying that she’s looking for redemption because it is VERY dramatic.

Like all Olympic athletes, Molly has overcome a lot of diseases, which I will now read off for you so that you have sympathy for her and marvel at her accomplishments. She survived the chicken pox, food poisoning, premenstrual syndrome, dengue fever, giardia, apraxia, dyslexia and sinusitis. Also, one time she sprained her knee. She thought she’d never walk again. But after Franklin Delano Roosevelt contacted her from beyond the grave to tell her that wheelchairs were not all they were cracked out to be, she put a little more effort into physical therapy. So not only did she walk again, she became a mentor for all people with sprained knees. Sometimes when she puts her hands on injured children, they walk again.

So now, Molly is here to face the world at table tennis. She has said that if she wins a gold medal, she will dedicate it to that cow from her childhood and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in gratitude for their inspiration. Then she will mail the medal, along with a box of chicken nuggets, to Pat Sajak, just to show him that there are no hard feelings.