Today I had a brush with Olympic greatness, walking past this sign.
However I once had a real brush with Olympic greatness, though I did not know it at the time.
As a kid I swam on a swim team in the Boston area. One kid who swam in my lane had a neat skill. No, not the no longer used back flip or some kind of great butterfly kick. He could crack his knuckles. Underwater!
This was very exciting and I was envious of someone who could crack his knuckles. My knuckles did not crack.
Luckily, he said all you had to do was just keep pressing the knuckle down day after day, and it would start to crack. Lo and behold, he was correct, and within a few weeks, the two of us would go underwater between sets and listen to our knuckles make this echoing pop underwater.
Now this team swam year round, however there were two very short (as in 2-3 week) breaks in there. After one break, I came back to the first workout, and during the first set of 5 x 100 IMs or whatever motioned to this lane mate to go underwater.
"Oh, I gave up cracking knuckles. It's bad for you."
So now this guy who had introduced me to knuckle cracking had moved on, leaving me with a bad habit (which I still have!)
Moving on, I became less and less eager to work out on this team. Not because of knuckles, but because by eighth grade you are supposed to attend ten workouts per week. This means before school AND after school AND both weekend days. Each workout 2.5 hours! It was just too much. So one spring break I decided to quit.
When I didn't show up, my friend (the knuckle cracker) called me up. (He lived in a North Shore town, we were in the "W" towns west of Boston.) "You're quitting? No way, you have to come back to the team."
Nope, I wasn't coming back. And that was the last I ever talked to him.
Well, a few months ago in a fit of nostalgia I googled the name of my swim team. On their "history" page they listed notable achievements, including the handful of kids who grew up to reach the Olympics.
And as it turns out, my friend the ex-knuckle cracker actually made it to the 1992 Olympics, swimming in a relay. The relay won bronze! However, it looks like he was only in the qualifying heat of the relay, replaced for the actual race. I wonder if that means he got a medal or not.
So that is my story of my brush with Olympic greatness. Clearly, this guy had more fortitude than I did. He was able not only to persevere and continue working out for another 10 years, but he gave up knuckle cracking cold turkey at the age of 12.
