Olympic Spirit

Team Canada won the gold medal in hockey.

We all pretty much expected they would.

Canadians invented Hockey. This is not a metaphor. It's a fact.

For the past two weeks I've been drunk on the Olympic Spirit, the idea that most of the athletes who arrive at the Olympic games are thrilled to even be competing at all. 99.9% of the people who show up to compete are pretty sure they're not going home with any kind of a medal. A lot of them are thrilled if they break a personal record, most of them consider it a success not to fall flat on their face.

I wept along with Joannie Rochette whose mother died only days before she took the ice at the games and won the Bronze Medal. I was happy for Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir when they won Gold in Ice Dancing.  I was even cheering (loudly) for Shen and Zhao, the Chinese couple who won Gold in Pairs Figure Skating. Don't get me wrong. I've also been rooting for my fellow Americans in Snowboarding, Skiing and the Nordic Combined thing where they shoot guns and then race around on cross-country skiis.

But seriously, Team USA, you played a great game of Hockey. Why the long faces? I know you came to win. Really. Everybody secretly hoped that by some small miracle they might get to take home a medal. You got a silver one. In the Olympics.

There are Billions of people on this planet who will never get an Olympic medal of ANY kind and you have a SILVER ONE.

You could at least have the grace and decency to look at least a little bit happy that you even made it to the championship round. You could at least have the grace and decency to NOT look like your mom got run over by a bus while walking your favorite dog.

There are so many worse things that can happen besides winning a silver medal in the Olympic Games. Like earthquakes. And tsunamis.

Really.

Suck it up.