I've
been pretty busy lately doing whatever it is that I do. Besides all that,
I've personally spent the week preparing for the Olympics.
Not that Olympics. Not that thing with the five rings and the Coca-Cola
logo. Any wimp can do that stuff.
You take your weight lifting. In the normal, ho-hum, panty-waist everyday
Olympics, some big bruiser in tights grunts, howls and groans until he
lifts a few hundred pounds over his head. B-I-G deal. Pardon me while I
drop off to sleep. The way I see it, this doesn't take any real skill or
planning, just a good breakfast, and maybe, if you've got a musk-ox
somewhere in your family lineage, that doesn't hurt either.
Now MY Olympics, that's a different story. My Olympics are held every
spring and fall, but the fall event is somewhat the more spectacular.
Preparation begins when my razor-sharp perceptive abilities begin
receiving vibrations of minute and subtle changes afoot in the
environment.
First, the walnut leaves turn a golden yellow, and each crisp breeze
brings more and more of them gently floating down from their branches.
Before long, flocks of geese can be seen and heard in the sky overhead as
they make their way southward. One night, I walk outside to learn that the
balmy night air of summer has been replaced by a sterner, less forgiving
ether.
Or, if my razor-sharp perceptive abilities have got a head-cold or
something, I just turn on the weather channel and they tell me that winter
is fast approaching.
That means that my house-plants have to come in before they get frosted.
All the conventional wisdom will tell you that the average first frost
around here is October 10. However, the conventional wisdom doesn't live
down in my valley where the cold likes to congregate... early.
This year's Autumn Olympics were held on October 8. Typically, this was
the day after the first frost. It's an essential part of my Olympic
Tradition that these pre-frost games actually take place AFTER the frost.
This underscores the fact that this is all done for the purity of the
sport, and not because I want my plants to look good all winter or
anything so shallow and banal as that. It's from this perspective, that
I'm then able to pontificate about the unpredictability of life and on the
personal ancestry and relative intelligence of the weatherman.
There are many, many challenging events comprising the Autumn Olympics,
but there's little argument that the feature event is Bringing In The
Hibiscus.
I have this Chinese-red hibiscus that typically spends the summer basking
in the sun of the front lawn (having arrived there as the feature event of
the Spring Olympics, Taking Out The Hibiscus). This monster is ten or
twelve years old and has grown to be about four feet high and nearly as
wide. Its' broad leaves and myriad branches almost completely conceal an
ancient 18" pot of Mexican origin that my sister gave me.
Recently, astronomers discovered a star half-way across our galaxy which
was dubbed a Magnetar. You may have missed it since it's not been
subpoenaed or anything, but according to the scientists, its density is so
great that, even though it's weight is 500,000 times that of earth, it is
only 12 miles in diameter!
I mention this so that you may have an appropriate image in your mind when
you visualize what I am about to carry from my front lawn up two flights
of stairs to the dormer window beside my office.
This is a solo event. About the time my son finally got big enough to
(theoretically) be of much help, he also obtained a driver's license,
which means he's never around here anymore and besides, he's a teenager,
which means he rarely does anything of any practical value anyway.
In his absence, I've considered finding and marrying a really brawny woman
(does anyone remember Nikita Kruschev's wife?) who could help with things
like this, but... well, everything has it's down-side.
Anyway, this year's running was quite dramatic, and I only wish I'd had
some way to record it for posterity. After I'd performed a sophisticated
series of stretches and warm-up exercises; after I'd stood facing the
plant and reached deep within myself for the mental discipline I would
need, I then reached deep within the plant to wrap my arms around the
slippery, round pot somewhere within the mass of foliage.
As I applied my first burst of energy, my mind flashed on those
regular-Olympic sissies who get to place their rosin-dusted hands on a
nice grippy bar before they lift it. Plunging most of my upper body into
this Porta-Jungle, I began the sequence of the events that those phonies
refer to as "the snatch". This however, isn't a very good description of
the process whereby one hefts this small planet off of the ground, tearing
loose from the earth whatever roots have grown through the drainage holes
and deep into the lawn. Perhaps "the struggle", "the bungle" or "the
vertebrae compression" would be better terms.
Terminology aside, reeling with a combination of relief and dismay, I find
myself standing vaguely upright clutching this little forest to my chest.
I lean forward slightly in the direction that I recall the house was last
located. The weight of the hibiscus then propels me across the yard and
toward the steps of my front porch. I ride this momentum up approximately
four of the eight steps where I lurch to a momentary halt, then start to
teeter slowly, agonizingly backward.
The thought of falling down the stairs and landing on the back of my skull
with this enormous thing coming to rest on my chinny-chin-chin gives me
the necessary adrenaline to clamber up the remaining stairs.
Between those stairs and the front porch, I am forced to pirouette around
something soft and lumpy that yelps like a dog who's just been stepped on
by a large tree.
Suddenly, I find myself through the front door, and with a pathetic gasp,
head on to the final, most rigorous and grueling leg of the event, in
which I mount the fourteen steps to the second floor in a gasping,
wheezing stumble to the top, there to plant the load directly on the plant
dolly which waits somewhere beyond the top step and on the other side of
all this greenery.
It seems that the hibiscus has had a very good summer. Even though I
manage a beautiful bull's-eye landing, the weight of the plant instantly
crushes the dolly, breaking off one wheel and bringing the sorry
combination of plant, pot and dead dolly to rest completely askew but
safely a the top of the stairs.
For a few moments I just lie there. My lungs ache as I gasp and I moan,
but I know that victory is mine, and I even manage a slight smile. I
hallucinate there are cheering crowds, I imagine microphones thrust in my
face (only these microphones have leaves and perhaps a dose of white-fly)
Voices ask me what it was like out there. Any judge in his or her right
mind will give me at least a 9.3. Somewhere, the theme from Rocky begins
to play.
So that's my athletic career to date. My trophy now sits in its' dormer,
soaking up the sun's rays, full of vim, vigor and a special blend of
rotted manure and bone meal. Next week I begin training for the Spring
Downhill, which makes what those cowardly Winter Olympics slalom racers do
look embarrassingly tame in comparison.
