My champions

This weekend my kids and I participated in the 2010 Winter Olympics. (Maybe you saw us on TV, if they cut away to the events being held in the St. Peter's RecPlex. I was on the ice at the time, so I don't know what they actually decided to televise.)

The events for the day were figure skating, speed skating, curling, "downhill" slalom, and ice hockey. Now I'm the sort of guy who wants to try out everything, but my kids were more hesitant. F and Q were excited about trying hockey and speed skating, while T wanted to figure skate and speed skate. Every one of them stated that there was at least one event they weren't going to try. (In fact, I heard many other people say the same thing. "I'm not good that that event, so I'm staying away from it.")

I wanted to climb up on my soapbox and lecture about how you can be surprised by the amount of fun something can be even if you've never tried it before, how it's good for your mind and body to stretch into new fields, and how the modern world is saying we all need to be experts in one thing even while silently demanding, simply by the rate of its change, that we learn how to learn new things quickly. I could very easily have pontificated about how I'd love them to find something to be passionate about, but that it shouldn't exclude all other activities. Instead I simply told them that I was going to try every event.

Guess what. My kids tried every event, too. And they all had a lot of fun.

Q fell flat on his back when he tried to shoot the hockey puck after making his way through the obstacle course, but he got up laughing. He was also brave enough to be the very first figure skater. T's shot at the hockey net went wide, but she caught the rebound off the boards and had a great big smile when she shot it into a lower corner. F's slide across the ice for the final pose for his figure skating routine was copied by some of the next skaters. They all skated the slalom, raced around the short track, and slid the big curling stones across the ice. Each of them stood on the awards platform, having tried every event the RecPlex offered.

To me, that makes them all champions… even if I did totally outscore every single one of them in curling.