The Backyard Olympics

Newsletter 2024-08-19

Over the weekend, I became an Olympic athlete. Okay, “athlete” might be a stretch. “Mostly sedentary participant” would be more accurate. It was my wife’s birthday, which meant it was her turn to pick an activity for our friend group. In our social circle, if you don’t plan your own celebration, someone else will do it for you, much to your detriment. That’s how you end up with a 3D printed bust of your own head. Lola wanted to do something simple for her birthday. It quickly morphed into an elaborate backyard competition complete with dress code, organized list of events, and opening and closing ceremonies. That’s the danger of sharing anything in our group text thread. We can turn even the humblest suggestions into all-day extravaganzas far bigger and dumber than they have any right to be. Our backyard Olympics were set to be the event of the summer, assuming you didn’t watch the actual Olympics, which easily could have happened since half the content was locked behind a paywall on the only streaming service I don’t pay for. Our Olympics wouldn’t have that problem. We had no paywall and no audience. Let the games begin.

I did most of the organizing. Lola is my wife. Disappointing her will always be my primary responsibility. I made a list of ten-ish physical games we could play based on what random sports equipment I had in my basement. For prizes, I went to Goodwill. Disappointingly, the thrift store didn’t have a full set of Olympic medals. I guess Michael Phelps is still holding on to all of his. They didn’t even have any non-Olympic trophies. I’ve done better in the past. Years ago, I found a trophy featuring a businesswoman holding a briefcase. I don’t know what the award was actually for, but it became our fantasy football trophy for half a decade. This time, the only thing I found approximating an actual award was a golden plastic cup that looked like it would melt in the dishwasher. I wanted an heirloom that would inconvenience people for a lifetime, or at least until next year when we hold the games again. It would defeat the purpose if I bought something for a quarter that the winner would simply throw away. I found what I was looking for in one of the random knick-knack aisles: a metal statue of a panda munching bamboo. It had nothing to do with the Olympics or any other kind of competition, but it was heavy enough to feel more valuable than its two-dollar price tag would indicate. It wasn’t until I got up to the checkout counter that I realized the panda was actually a piggy bank. I retroactively gave it a purpose. The winner of our backyard Olympics would fill up the panda with change and use the money to buy the opening toast for next year’s games. It was all part of my subtle plan to make my friends stick around for another twelve months and not ghost me like they should. More importantly, a panda is far cooler than some lame medal you wear once and then stick in a safety deposit box. Feel free to steal any of these great ideas if you work for the real Olympics.

We held the games at my brother-in-law Jerry’s house. He and his wife Alice don’t have any pigs in their backyard, making it devoid of joy but better for sports. Nobody wants to twist and ankle tripping over a random swine. Getting there was an ordeal. I filled my van to the breaking point with food, athletic gear, and children. Three of my four kids joined us for the expedition. My fourteen-year-old, Betsy, stayed home. She’s too old and cool to leave the house. To her, the greatest celebration of all is when all three of her siblings go away. The girls who joined us wouldn’t be participating in the games. They were mostly there to be a distraction for their cousin who is Waffle’s age and also to help us eat the clearly excessive amount of food we were taking with us. There was no way they were letting us eat those bomb pops without them. Leaving out food attracts wild animals and children alike.

There were only six people in our Olympics, which is a tad fewer than the thousands who participated in the Paris games. We were joined, as usual, by our board game friends, Peter and Delilah. For the opening ceremonies, I had a speech planned, but it was hard to get half a dozen adults in the room at the same time. Jerry and Alice have a baby, and the rest of us have short attention spans. I sent the kids away so I could play our unofficial national anthem, the theme song to Team America, World Police. If you don’t like profanity, do not Google that song. All events for the day were co-ed. To handicap the guys, I declared that all men had to chug two beers by the end of the song. It was Busch Light, though, so it was basically water. We were just hydrating. Those were, of course, the only alcoholic beverages we had all day. Assume all actions from this point forward were performed in a state of complete sobriety. As always, I am a reliable narrator.

The first event was cornhole. Lola and I teamed up. It was the only time she made that mistake all day. We were soundly defeated by Peter and Delilah. They went on to beat Jerry and Alice. Lola and I needed to play Jerry and Alice to determine second and third place, but we couldn’t get them both out of the house at the same time. It was almost like babies take a lot of work. We made new teams and moved on to ladder ball, which is basically cornhole, but with different throwing implements. That was taking too long, so we lessened the necessary score to win from twenty-one to eleven. I lost again, which is kind of my thing, but nobody else was able to fit in a game. While waiting for people, Jerry and I killed time by pulling a small, dead tree out of the ground, which was the highlight of my day. I got to improve Jerry’s yard by destroying something. I’m sure they did similar stuff at the real Olympics. Not long after that, it was time for lunch. Like true Midwesterners, we cooked twice as much food as we could possibly eat. Fueled with the finest take-and-bake pizzas Walmart had to offer, we were ready for the afternoon. If we put our minds to it, maybe we would even finish an event.

Lola made things easier by declaring cornhole and ladder ball to be over. She was the birthday girl, so she had that kind of unilateral power. That left me in last place for both events, which is where I belonged. The system worked. Delilah introduced a game where we had to inflate a balloon and use it to stack cups. Alice couldn’t blow up her balloon. I made fun of her relentlessly until I tried it. I couldn’t blow one up, either. That was more than a little upsetting. I have huge lungs and guzzle more oxygen than anyone I know, yet I couldn’t direct any of that air through a tiny rubber opening. Getting older is just the process of finding new things I’m bad at. When Delilah started the timer, however, the adrenaline took over. My balloon miraculously inflated, and I finished second by time. I spent the rest of the day periodically trying to inflate balloons to figure out if it was a fluke. I have a whole new area of my life to feel self-conscious about. Now I have to become an expert at making balloon animals to prove a point.

Next up was the Home Run Derby. Everybody got ten attempts to knock plastic balls over the fence. For once, we let the kids participate. We needed them to run around and pick up balls. They didn’t have many home runs to retrieve. The adults forgot to take our steroids. Mark McGwire would have been so disappointed in us. After that, we moved on to the water balloon toss. You scored points by catching them without popping them. That quickly devolved into throwing water balloons at the kids, which Delilah labeled as “turkey shoot” on the score sheet. I brought a bunch of round plastic sleds to use in various games. The only time they actually came into play was when the children used them as shields from the water balloon onslaught. At the start of the summer, we formed those same sleds into a shield wall to capture a rescue pig from behind a burned-out house. We use those sleds for everything but sledding. I hope it never snows.

Exhausted and overheated, we went inside to play our favorite card game, Aggretsuko. I’m convinced the six of us are the only people on the face of the earth who know this game exists and that it will soon be out of print. Just in case, I bought three copies. Liking the game isn’t the same as being good at it. I lost again, completing an impressive streak of futility for the day. Before any of the games, my ten-year-old, Lucy, told me she thought I would win because I’m tall and work out a lot. Little did she know I can’t even blow up a balloon. After cards, I took a nap like a true Olympian while Jerry grilled in the rain. Having fun is exhausting. So is being out in the sun and also existing. I’m doing the opposite of aging gracefully. That didn’t stop me from trying to recapture my youth after dinner.

With the food put away, we regressed to our college days. We set up a card table in the garage and played flippy cup and beer pong. I wasn’t drinking by then because I had to drive us home. It took a long time for those two light beers from the opening ceremonies to wear off. To the surprise of no one, beer games are less fun when not drinking beer. I pounded my bottled water as I failed in various ways with red plastic cups. Because we’re proper adults, even the people who were still drinking didn’t put beer directly in the red containers. They filled them with water and then took a sip from a can when someone made a shot. It disgusts me to no end that college kids drink beer after it’s made contact with a wet ping pong ball that’s been rolling around on the floor. The next pandemic will definitely start at some frat’s kegger.

After the final event, Delilah tallied the points. She arbitrarily added a few here or there like Dumbledore when he wanted House Slytherin to lose. There were bonuses for categories like best sunglasses and most patriotic underwear. Her manipulations didn’t change the overall standings. Lola won, which really means I won since we’re married. Communal property laws say that sweet, sweet panda piggy bank also belongs to me for the next year. I canceled out finishing second-to-last in points by being married to such an amazing woman. I’m the real winner here.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James