The soaps — that’s real drama

Don’t you just hate it when someone ‘steals your thunder?’ Or your ideas? Or worse yet, column material?

Yes, you read it correctly, column material.

I doubt if there is anyone alive (or dead for that matter) who writes

or wrote) newspaper columns who doesn’t (or didn’t) struggle from time to time to come up with something interesting, timely or funny to write about.

For me, if my family, friends or politicians don’t provide any fodder, I am pretty much at a loss.

So, when the Olympics rolled around I thought for sure I’d see something that would prime my creative juices.

I did, but then Klonie (Jordan, Ledger editor) had to go and mess things up by writing about the Games in his column Monday.

After reading what he had to say about the Olympics, I began to search for a new topic. Don’t want to bore our readers, now do we?

So I headed to the Y where a brisk walk on the treadmill sometimes gets those creative juices flowing. If the brisk walk doesn’t do it, the soaps I watch while on the treadmill do.

Yes, I do enjoy my ‘stories’ — “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful.”

The rule at the Y is the channel selection is based on first come, first served. Most of the time when I get there, the soaps are already on.

Occasionally, like yesterday, someone has the TV tuned to another channel. Tuesday, Olympic ice hockey was on. Not wanting to make waves, I tried to get interested.

The first thing I noticed was the time keeping. Did you know that the time in hockey goes up? When I first started watching, the clock was at about two minutes.

‘Great,” I thought. “It’s almost over.” Canada was playing Czechoslovakia (I think). The next time the clock was shown, it was at about five minutes.

“Do they run the clock up in hockey?” I asked Limestone lacrosse coach Chris Hasbrouck, who was on the treadmill next to me. Chris, by the way, also is hooked on Y&R and B&B.

You should see the looks we get when someone comes in and asks if they can change from the soaps and we tell them no. A female didn’t believe Chris one day and changed it anyway. Being the gentleman he is, not a word was said. (I think he was embarrassed to admit he REALLY does watch the soaps.)

Back to the hockey. Canada won, but both teams were already in the next round, so the game didn’t really matter. So why was anyone interested? Unlike in the NHL, fights are not allowed in Olympic hockey. I do not understand the rules, so that’s probably one reason the sport doesn’t appeal to me. Icing? What’s that? I always thought it was what’s on top of a cake.

By the time the clock reached 20, I was nearing the end of my walk, so I did not bother changing the channel, even though I was the only left in the room.

I have enjoyed watching some of the Olympics, the snowboard racing for one (NASCAR on snow as described by the NBC announcers) and the speed skating for another (NASCAR on ice as described by the NBC announcers).

That’s real head-to-head competition that I can understand. First one across the finish line wins.

In the other skiing competition, I couldn’t help but marvel at how the announcers critiqued the various runs on the timed events.

Just listening to them, you’d think some of these guys were having a terrible time negotiating the slopes, but when all was said and done, they’d only be a tenth of a second behind the winner. Snap your fingers. That’s a tenth of a second. Same thing with the bobsledding, luge, skeleton and other timed events. The only way I could tell if someone was having a bad run was if they skied off the trail or ran into a wall.

Another thing that has caused the Olympics to lose some luster is the realization that the athletes compete almost every week in the same events. I know, I know. It’s the Olympics. The Super Bowl of winter sports. The Olympics are to these athletes what Daytona is to racin’ (now there’s a sport that never had any luster for me), what the World Series is to baseball and on and on.

When the U.S. won the gold in hockey (the Miracle on Ice) several years ago, I watched with much interest. When the U.S. basketball team was cheated out of the gold given to the Russians by the referees in the early 70s I watched with much interest. When Tonya Harding had her rival Nancy Kerrigan beat up I watched with interest.

The Olympics, I think, became just another competition, for me at least, when the amateurs became professionals.

Nowadays, when I want to see some real drama, I watch the soaps. That is, unless someone who doesn’t like them beats me to the treadmill.

(Cody Sossamon is publisher of The Gaffney Ledger. You can contact him via e-mail at cody@gaffneyledger.com)