(Originally published April 7, 2010 at playgroupwithsylviaplath.com)

It was spring vacation and it happened.  One of every mothers worst travel nightmares.  No, there was no lurker in the airport bathroom and we survived a week of skiing with all of our bones intact.  Even all of our bags and skis made it home.

But we are short one small blue and yellow plaid cotton blanket belonging to my youngest child.  Yes, it’s his security blanket, his lovey, his transitional object, his wubby, his everything.

After spending 5 nights in a slopeside condominium, he was readying himself for bed at his grandparents’ house in Denver.  He was crouched in his flannel insect pajamas pulling out the contents of his backpack – a set of colored pencils, a “Beginning Cursive” workbook, wintergreen Lifesavers, iPod headphones, Madlibs vacation edition, neon green swim goggles, and bubblegum.

“Mom, where did you pack Blanket?”

Let’s face it, if it was anyone or anything else, I would have immediately launched into my practiced monologue of, “if you want it, you pack it, you carry it.”  But this was a very young 8-year-old with freckles across the bridge of his nose looking for Blanket, without which he’d never spent a night in his life.

I froze. I had packed the bags and even checked under the beds while the family was on the mountain.  But I did not come across his blanket. It must have been left between the sheets over 100 miles away.

“We’ll find it.  We’ll call the hotel and they’ll mail it to us at home. Don’t worry.”

But I am worried.  It may not be found, and a replacement is impossible. The blanket was hand-woven by my mother-in-law while I was pregnant.  This bears repeating. The blanket was hand-woven by my mother-in-law.

Blanket has traveled with us to 26 states, 11 countries and 3 continents.  I say this not to make a pitch for Blanket as a guest star on Lifestyles of The Rich and Famous, but more as plea for leniency in the peer judgment department.

I have safeguarded the two foot square piece of cloth (did I mention that my mother-in-law wove it?) on planes, trains, automobiles, and a camel ride through the Sahara Desert.  Yet leave it to one routine trip to my native Colorado to blow my record of perfection into perfect failure.

It is said that over 60% of children develop strong attachments to a blanket, a doll, a stuffed toy or some other object during their first months of infancy.

Credit for the term “security blanket” goes to Charles Schultz and his Peanuts comic strip character Linus van Pelt, whose ever-present blue blanket debuted in 1954.

However, the phenomena of children and their attachment objects was studied and named by British pediatrician and psychologist Donald Winnicott in the early 1950s.  He asserted that a “transitional object” stands in as mother for a child fending off separation or anxiety – be it falling to sleep, when mother leaves the room, or going on a trip.

To compensate for this loss or fear, a child will imbue a soft object with the attributes of mother, comfort and safety.  As the child “transitions” from an inner world of infancy to a better understanding of self and the external world, the blanket or other object is intimately bound up with the identity of the child.

In our house, this holds true for Thing One and Thing Three. Thing Two, on the other hand, came into this world with a healthy understanding of self, independence, and I’ll call you when I need more money attitude.

I remember taking my oldest to his first movie when he was two years old, The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland.  The film was reviewed as “perfect family entertainment… lots of nice music, jokes and warmth.”

For those of you who may have missed the 1999 release of cinematic mediocrity, the entire plot is Elmo searching for his security blanket which has been sent to faraway Grouchland – a place full of villainous people and creatures.

Hello! That’s like running a loop of child abduction films in the maternity ward.

Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale University, has studied children and their possessions, particularly their special comfort objects.  One study gave children the option of putting their belongings into a “magic” copying machine that would make exact duplicates. They would then be allowed to take their original, or the presumably “brand new” copy.

When it came to just any toy, most children selected the duplicate.  But when it came to replicating a special comfort object, some participants would not even let their “lovies” be put into the machines, and almost all of the children chose their originals.

Bloom surmises that children believe the favored object has “a hidden and invisible property – an ‘essence’ – that distinguishes it from everything else.”

And this should surprise no one.

As the horse in the nursery explained to The Velveteen Rabbit, “Real isn’t how you are made. It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become REAL.”

And Blanket was real.

More than any other possession my boy has or will ever have, Blanket was, if the psych field is to be believed, his facsimile of me.  And as his mother, I can tell you that Blanket was indeed the closest facsimile of him.

Every parent knows that hiccup of the heart when you hold the threadbare blanket, the shaggy stuffed dog, or the lumpy lop-eared bunny your child has dragged from crawling, to walking, to finally being tossed unceremoniously up the stairs as he heads out to a baseball game.

We may yell at our kids for leaving their shoes or jackets in piles on the floor a thousand times.  But as more complicated toys, heavy backpacks and sports equipment are added to those piles, the loved doll, Puppy, bunny, Blanket or Dog-Dog takes on relic status.

In analyzing possessions and what gives us pleasure, Professor Bloom explains, “Everything is either a social being or has been in contact with a social being, and so even the most mundane things have histories. This is their essence.

The first night back in his own room, I suggested to my youngest that he might want to take a stuffed animal to bed with him.  As a plush toy connoisseur, he specializes in replicas of endangered species – or at least those “on watch” – bald eagle, tiger, snow leopard, emperor penguin, polar bear, manatee, the clouded leopard, and a giant anteater.

He pulled out the panda Tai Shan from last spring break’s trip to Washington D.C. (a trip from which we did return with Blanket).

“I’ll try this tonight,” he said cheerily as he climbed into his fire engine red sheets.  “And maybe tomorrow night I’ll pick out a different one to sleep with.”

Which is how I came to realize that I am now more desperate for him to get his blanket back than he is.  I’m sure any pediatrician would tell me that my child has reached some healthy developmental milestone of self and independence.

But what the doctors have missed is that the “transitional object” goes both ways.  Because of their 8-year history together, Blanket is indeed imbued with my son’s essence.  He has made it REAL.  And I want it back.

So for now, I’m counting on Jalva Jiminez of housekeeping to return it to me.

She tells me they are behind 8,000 pounds of laundry.  And a small piece of the essence of his childhood and my motherhood is in the laundry pile.

Don’t I know it.

(Originally published March 23, 2010 at playgroupwithsylviaplath.com)

The email chain started a few months ago.  So many friends from my college circle lived in or around New York City, that it seemed a good idea to plan a dinner.  You know, get the band back together.  Nothing formal.  No need to wait for the university to plan it for us.

The date was picked, location settled, and at least a dozen women and men planned to be there. What a treat it would be to catch up with so many acquaintances after almost twenty years.

And then the week arrived and I was nearly nauseous at the thought.

First, there was the location.  The initial email from one of the women was, “I am glad to host either at our apt or the downtown house.”  Wow, the apartment, the downtown house, (got a pool, got a pond). Good living in Manhattan.

A later email clarified, that no, my friend was not actually long on real estate, “The Downtown House” was an exclusive club where there would be a guest list, a private room and a hip downtown atmosphere.  Which, of course, made it almost worse.

The night before the dinner, the real crisis hit.  No matter the size or contents of your closet, every woman knows that paralyzing fear.  What to wear?

This particular event left me without my usual crutch of asking a friend what she was wearing.  Each of these women lived in Manhattan, and I was afraid someone was going to use the words “skinny” and “jeans” in the same sentence.

But more than where to go or what to wear, I was most anxious about what to say.

Normally, I’m the last person in the room to be short on words or self-confidence.  However, this would be an Ivy League dinner and the table would look something like this (okay, exactly like this): lawyer, doctor, lawyer, doctor, lawyer, banker, corporate VP, banker, corporate VP.  And then there was me.

And, well, “blogger” just sounds way too much like “blah-ger” or “blomit” to throw it out there with my head held high.  The word “freelance” really isn’t much of an improvement.  And once it’s been ten years, it’s probably time to drop the, “well I used to…”

Fundamentally, I knew the dinner would be great, but all I could see on my plate was a heaping portion of “I used to be somebody and now I’m somebody’s mom.”

Truly, I’m not interested in the tongue twisting debate of working mothers, stay-at-home-mothers, mothers who work at home, or mothers who would prefer to work in neither locale. The roles are not a debate to be won or lost.

Regardless, we open our conversations and make small talk with the nearest common denominator.  If you are on the baseball sidelines or one more birthday party at the go-kart park, then the line of questioning is, “how many?” and “what are their ages?”

But if you are at a cocktail party or a fundraising dinner, then inevitably “how about that rain?” will be followed with “so, what do you do?”

I realize this is intended as the most benign of questions and meant to be about as personal as the weather. But the silence seems to grow louder the longer I wait to respond. The question calls out to be answered simply with a title or a company name.  And when you have neither to supply, then it seems that a more personal question couldn’t have been asked.

This single conversation is a minefield for me every time.

But this group of people should have been different.  I’d known them half my life and we’d collectively matured into adults together.  How could they make me feel like a seventh grader heading to the middle school dance?

“Reunions are supposed to be a time to be together, celebrate life’s changes and get back in touch with each other’s lives,” explains Long Island psychologist, Linda Sapadin.  “They are not supposed to be a career contest or a beauty contest.”

Intellectually, yes, that’s an easy argument to make.  But, emotionally, reunions can feel like a checkpoint or a pit stop on life’s achievement track.

And then, Dr. Sapadin’s years as a relationship specialist and success coach come to bear as she names my affliction.  Social comparison theory.

“We don’t compare ourselves to the average person, we compare ourselves to our own social network.  How am I doing against these people I started off with, and how will they judge me?”

Sure enough, I was doing it to myself.  The morning’s visit to the orthodontist, the appointment with the gutter expert and The Downtown House conundrum weren’t enough.  I had added the universal burden of “measuring up” to my to-do list.

“Particularly people who were successful in very competitive schools seem to think they can have it all,” she explains – obviously forgetting that I have asked her for an interview, not a one sentence personal analysis.  “People take different paths in life, and all of these paths show us that you can’t have it all or do it all at the same time.”

And my path had me on an afternoon train, hurtling towards Penn Station, New York.  Surprisingly, as the dinner got closer, my anxiety began to dissipate.

First, there was a pre-drink with one of the bankers.  And what did he want to talk about? His kids and mine.

Then, while still down the street, I got an email from one of the doctors who’d already arrived at the dinner. “On the 6^th floor, in some sort of David Lynch film. Food and beverages. Come.”  Oh yes, there would be skinny jeans aplenty and every flavor of uber-hip, metro-techno character at the exclusive club, but not among my people. Come.

With each new arrival to the party, there was a flurry of enthusiasm and laughs.  And it was just like Louis Armstrong’s line, “Sayin’ How do you do? They’re really saying I love you” from What A Wonderful World.  Every time someone said, “so what are you doing now?”  they were really saying, “It’s so good to see you.”

Our last classmate arrived grinning just like he used to breeze into the dining hall twenty years ago, “Hey, guys, which way’s the bar?”

Yes, the cocktail party could begin.  No flak jacket required.

(Originally published March 16, 2010 at playgroupwithsylviaplath.com)

Just last week I took my first-born to the pediatrician for his 13-year-old well visit. An official teenager.  What better opportunity to make a study of the species and prepare myself for the years to come?

The American teenager officially came into existence in the 1940s.  Obviously, kids have matured through the “–teen” suffixed years since time immemorial, however the social construct and even the term “teenager” are relatively new concepts resulting from modern American privilege.

First, the depression brought child labor laws into effect, keeping kids out of the workforce and putting them back in school.  Second, prosperity followed World War II; and American society shifted to become more child-centric.  It was the “perfect storm” – high schoolers with free time, increasingly indulgent parents with money, a country riding the wave of a postwar boom, and the release of the Fender electric guitar in 1946.

The American teenager has been a driving force in our culture, media, and economy ever since.  My boy is now one of about 30.5 million teenagers populating our middle schools and high schools. I have been conditioned as a parent to expect the coming years to be simultaneously precious and painful, as I watch my son pass through the crucible of adolescence. Just a handful of years between Legos and legal age in which to find out who you are, forge an identity, and achieve autonomy.  That’s a pretty tall order when you weigh 82 pounds and don’t quite reach 5 feet.

Fortunately, teens have always had plenty of adults telling them who they are and what they want – just ask them.  Although new to the world of teens, I know enough to let the dude “chillax” on the weekend and not ask him to cut his hair because it might kill the “flow,” which I’m assuming is a close relative of Qi and fengshui.  I also know enough to call on some psychologists, youth marketing analysts and sociologists to help me make sense of the landscape.

First, adults like labels. And I don’t mean youth market favorites Abercrombie and Fitch, American Eagle and Under Armour.

Many sociologists and demographers put my son’s birth year, 1997, as the start of a new generation, Generation Z.  Christened as such simply because it falls after Generation X (those born between 1961 and 1981), and Generation Y (those born between 1980 and the late 1990s).

What happened to all of the catchy descriptives? The Lost Generation, The Silent Generation, The Baby Boomers.  Are entire chunks of the population destined to be known simply as alphabetical letters by which academics have dubbed them?

Just weeks in with a new teen, I find myself defensive on his behalf as outside forces try to label, categorize and define him and his amoebic peers by attributes and timelines completely out of their control.  They seem to be told who they are before they have a chance to discover it for themselves.

Some have even referred to my son and his younger cohorts as the Homelander Generation because they have no first hand memory of the September 11, 2001 attacks.  Others have labeled them The Net Generation or Generation I (internet) or Generation D (digital) because they will be the first group of Americans to never experience education, work and play without the internet.

So far, my teen seems to be living up to those expectations. “If I could have anything, I’d get the iPad and an iPhone.  But if I couldn’t get an iPhone then I’d want the Droid,” he explained when asked about a fantasy birthday list. “AT&T’s service and coverage are better, but Verizon has better phones. It’s just always been that way,” he says like he’s working a pop-up booth at an industry trade show.

“And if I couldn’t get an iPad, then I’d get a MacBook Pro with the biggest screen available,” his tech reverie continues.  When asked why the Pro laptop over the more consumer geared MacBook, he explained, “The Pro has a better battery life and I would definitely want the biggest battery.”  Clearly, that seventh grade science report calls out for the one extra hour of battery life costing an additional $1500.

Indeed, research and marketing guru Josh Weil, CEO of Youth Trends, says, “You cannot underestimate how savvy today’s teens are with all things tech-related. It sets them apart from all previous generations.” This next generation seems poised to teach us that technology is the medium and the message.  Technology is the means and the end.

But for the youth who’ve yet to break out (literally and figuratively), perhaps it’s just the beginning?  I want the media and society to leave open the possibility that my son and his generation might surprise us.  I don’t want them to be defined simply by how frequently or how quickly they text, swipe, blast, tweet, and update.

Certainly, experts say there are other signposts to today’s teens – environmentalism, initiative, vampires, stress and enhanced water drinks. But aren’t those all things that have been sold to them by Generation X, Generation Y and The Baby Boomers?

When I watch my 13-year-old singing next to me in the car, or even when I look at a picture of his smiling toddler face, I still see limitless potential – and unnamed possibilities. Not teenage angst and not the Homelander Generation.  I am optimistically looking forward to discovering what his generation teaches us about themselves and our world.

And as a parent, I can teach my child that labels aren’t everything.  Not Urban Outfitters or Juicy Couture.  And not Generation Z or Generation I.  And I can teach him that people can grow and labels can change.  The G.I. Generation may not have been all that unique as teenagers either, but decades later they earned themselves a PR overhaul courtesy of Tom Brokaw, and became The Greatest Generation.

Just in case, I’ll keep a space open on my bookshelf for the 2050 bestseller, The Greatester Generation.  Actually, I’ll probably just have to set aside some memory for it on my e-reader.

(Originally published March 5, 2010 at playgroupwithsylviaplath.com)

As if anyone needed proof, it’s been a really long winter…

Like many in his gender, Slim likes to throw around numbers, statistics and dates the way most women can be dropped in a grocery store like a military recon mission and know instinctively where the produce, eggs and bread are located. (And need we even ask the question, which one of these skills actually keeps the family fed?)

A few weeks ago, he floated this one out there. “Did you know that forty percent of women have had car accidents in their own garages?”

Seasoned by his particular line of baiting, I immediately brushed him off with a convincing, “That is ridiculous. That is totally made up.”

“No, it’s true,” he went on. “And you know what else, 100% of those women think it’s not funny.”

I thought this would set off a round of women screwing in light bulb jokes, or a discussion of the years-old claim that a woman over 40 was more likely to be killed by a terrorist than get married.

But no, he was content to stick with women challenged by the confines of their own homes, or rather garages.

“If you don’t believe me, prove it,” he said.

Happily rising to the defense of my gender, I checked with insurance agents, drivers ed instructors, homebuilders, commercial parking lot designers, and body shop specialists. None could give me any hard data on the postulation.

However, they were each happy to share countless stories of women drivers who had indeed come in too close contact with their own domestic structures.

“It happens all the time,” said my local body shop, which repairs over 1,000 cars a year. “It’s always, ‘I didn’t see the car,’ ‘I didn’t see the pole,’ or ‘I didn’t see the wall.’”

As for those walls that seem to jump out of nowhere, builders told me of routinely having to return to clients’ homes to repair the door frames, garage doors, the actual garage walls, side-jambs, and even the drywall at the front of garages that bumpers mysteriously break through.

Over the last few decades, garages and their attendant doors have steadily grown to meet the demands of larger cars, and perhaps increasingly distracted drivers. A standard double car garage door used to be 16 feet wide by 7 feet high. With many SUVs and minivans measuring in at over 6 feet high, 6 feet wide, and a whopping 18-plus feet long, that would be a tight squeeze.

Garage doors are now made a standard 8 feet high and are commonly broken down into two 9 or 10 feet wide his and hers bays. Plenty of room for a $600 collapsible stroller to be moved without collapsing.

It would appear, however, that this additional width might not have solved the problem.

Although I’m no statistician, I built a few spreadsheets in my day and can certainly collect a set of data. So, I farmed the question out to 25 friends and family across the country – trying to account for city dwellers and suburban types, number of kids, size of vehicle and even style of driver. Yes, I’m equipped to judge my circle.

I’ve looked for all kinds of angles to spin the data, but sadly, it comes out that nearly 70% of women have had some type of altercation with their own garage, driveway or mailbox.

And a note to many of my friends who started their replies with “no” and followed that with “however,” “except,” and “actually.” You could have just skipped the “no” part.

Buried in the numbers, replies and explanations, there were some real treasures. I promised to protect the innocents, but these are my people and this is why I love them:

I clipped both side view mirrors without leaving my property.

I took out the whole tail end of my car when I backed into a concrete planter. Stupid thing shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

My second incident was when I backed the Volvo wagon out of the garage with the ski rack on top. Put two perfect circular holes in the garage door that was hanging above the car.

Addendum to the note to friends: numbering your incidents is not in your best interest.

I didn’t judge how far the boat trailer stuck out in the driveway, and it ended up right in the back seat through the hatch.

If it’s worth getting there, it’s worth getting there fast. I had my pedal down all the way while backing straight out of my curving driveway and a huge tree popped out of nowhere to shatter my back window.

Actually, the only driving altercation I’ve ever had was in our driveway—backed right into another vehicle. What can I say? It was where I needed to go.

Of course there was the time I was multitasking and forgot to close the back hatch before I exited the garage. Calling my husband was not one of my favorite phone calls to make…

And let’s face it, once you’ve made that phone call, explaining the incident to the insurance agent is easy.

“Oh sure, we get a lot of claims of women hitting their garage doors,” said an Allstate specialist. “But the highest claims we see from women are probably parking lot instances.”

Ah yes, the challenge of maneuvering a beast of a vehicle into a 9 foot opening, while reading an email that lacrosse practice has moved fields and your eight-year-old explains that he didn’t mean to spit his gum in your hair. He was just laughing so hard.

Well, parking lots are no laughing matter.

China is not exactly the first nation that springs to mind when you hear “female-friendly.” (This is where my kids would say, cough–cough, one-child policy, female infanticide.) However, the nation hit the news several weeks ago after a shopping center opened a dedicated “car park for women.”

The parking lot’s spaces are three feet wider and the lines are painted in pink and light purple to “cater to women’s strong sense of color and different sense of distance,” according to officials.

The news set off accusations of gender stereotyping and sexism round the globe. Sure, it’s a bit presumptuous and debasing. But, ladies stop with the doth protesting too much. What’s wrong with bigger parking spaces? At our golf club, there’s a flat screen television in the men’s locker room but none in the ladies. And trust me, Slim’s not clamoring for change saying “Hey, that’s sexist.”

Besides that would just encourage my middle, who received the movie Spinal Tap for his 10th birthday, to say, “What’s wrong with being sexy?”

I decided to see if these generous parking spaces were going to become an international trend. And for that, my local mall took me straight to the top. The King Of Prussia Mall is the largest retail space in the country (apologies to Mall of America, an indoor amusement park doesn’t count as shopping).

With over 13,000 parking spaces, I was curious, would they be widening any of them with their largely female consumer base in mind? But alas, no. No larger spaces and no light purple lines, although they do have valet parking and shuttle bus service during the holiday season.

So, as much as Slim would like me to end with: “And my husband was right.” I think I’d rather leave you with an observation from a wise drivers ed instructor.

“One thing I notice with drivers is that there is more or less an inverse relationship. The brighter the person, the more difficulty they have picking up some of the basic concepts of backing out and parking.”

(Originally published February 24, 2010 at playgroupwithsylviaplath.com)

I could go on and on with my love of all things Olympic, so I’ve decided to break my piece into two parts. Breaking all kinds of blogging rules at the same time, I’m sure.

For as much as I love these two weeks in February, I do have one little pet peeve. It’s 8 lines long and, according to Olympic rules, can last no longer than 80 seconds. It’s our national anthem, and why none of our athletes seems to be able to sing it on the medal stand.

I’ve watched an almost embarrassing amount of Games coverage now, including a half dozen medal ceremonies. I have yet to see the winner join in song when his or her anthem is played. Sure, they’ve just won a gold medal for themselves and their country. How can I possibly expect them to sing? But I do. I want them to sing it. Quietly to themselves, or as loudly and off-key as I sing in my car.

Obviously, every athlete goes to the Games knowing the ultimate goal is to stand on that middle platform. So why do they all look so lost, confused, and surprised when the music begins? Poor Alexandre Bilodeau, the first Canadian to ever win the gold on home soil, looked like a (charming) deer in headlights as the Maple Leaf flag went up. You’d think that Canada’s $120 million campaign to “Own The Podium” could have covered a lesson or two on Oh Canada.

A study in 2004 showed that two out of three American adults could not sing the national anthem. I decided to test the numbers on my own Americans. Thing One belted out the full verse a cappella with pride. Thing Two claimed “stage fright.” And Thing Three got stuck in a perpetual loop of “dawn’s early light.” But, our Olympic athletes have shown us we can expect more from them.

We all know The Star Spangled Banner was taken from a poem Francis Scott Key wrote as he waited to see who would emerge victorious when the British Royal Navy took it to our young nation in the War of 1812. And it’s not metaphoric. The rockets and bombs really were bursting in air, but early the next morning 15 stripes and 15 stars rose above Baltimore Harbor and Fort McHenry. The Fort is the only National Historic Shrine in the country and was the first site ever allowed to fly the flag night and day, 365 days a year. And whenever our flag was changed to add a new star, it flew over Fort McHenry first so that the quilted cloth would indeed become The Star Spangled Banner.

The song’s first association with sports was baseball’s opening day in Philadelphia in 1897, but it became a game fixture during the Boston Red Sox 1918 World Series win (Slim would tell you that’s when modern history as we know it began). President Herbert Hoover declared The Star Spangled Banner our national anthem in 1931.

The tune has been played a remarkable 7 times already at these Games, yet only snowboarder Seth Westcott has attempted to mumble his way through the verse on the podium. I expect Bode Miller thought it would be difficult to chew his gum and sing at the same time. However, my oldest proved in the third grade that one can play an entire recorder concert while chewing gum. I think Bode could have managed it.

Some athletes have taken their hats off, and some have even placed a hand over their heart and faced the flag, as is protocol laid out by the official U.S. Flag Code. There is no mention of the common conundrum of what to do when wearing a tiara during the anthem.

But what about the singing? The U.S. Olympic Committee has tried to script and control every aspect of the team’s appearance and behavior (what to wear when, and no tweeting or Facebooking until March 3rd), so it would reason they might also help our 216 athletes prepare for the podium.

To find out, I asked a U.S. Olympian – who happens to sport at least one medal of every color, and indeed did sing as our flag was raised. “The US Olympic Committee requires you to attend orientation and one of the items is ‘singing the national anthem,’” he said. “They gave us the words but told us NOT to sing if you don’t know the words. The USOC thinks it’s disrespectful when the words coming from the athlete’s mouth don’t match the anthem.”

You’d think that if our athletes can train up to 11 hours a day, that they’d be able to memorize 8 lines. As for the singing, if you’re sporting gold, nobody cares if you’re off key. When the hockey team beat the Russians in 1980, they spontaneously sang God Bless America – and with their discordant Boston and Minnesota accents, it couldn’t have been pretty. Yet I’m sure they all sang the anthem two days later when they received their gold medals.

But they weren’t singing it from the podium, as the platforms were only intended for team captains back then. After the flag was raised and the anthem sung, our U.S. captain invited the other 19 Americans to squeeze onto the stand with him. Since then, Olympic podiums have been enlarged to accommodate an entire team of gold medalists.

And that’s why I love the Olympics.