As the Olympic games wind down, I am once again impressed by how many of Dartmouth's star athletes go on to represent the United States at the games. Adam Nelson '97 just won the silver in shotput at Sydney, and every Winter Olympics, several people make the team.
Now, the rest of us may feel like relative couch-potatoes as our classmates go off to run like gazelles, jump like kangaroos and ski like ... well, animals fail me. I know I feel pretty lazy sitting in front of my Mac while Adam Nelson is off throwing a metal ball that probably weighs almost as much as my monitor 70 feet. I might be able to make my monitor travel seventy feet if I could count the thirty feet down from my third floor window, and then the monitor started rolling downhill.
But nevertheless, I hold that the rest of us less athletic Dartmouth students participate in our own daily Olympics of sorts, simply trying to negotiate life in Hanover. The following, I am sure, would certainly be events were there a Hanover Games.
The Food Court Sandwich Wait. Not a high intensity event. Athletes are scored on their ability to remain calm despite the mind-boggling amount of time it takes for the one person in front of you to get a turkey sandwich. I have yet to medal in this event.
The A-lot Triathlon. Beginning every Monday morning at around 8 a.m., competitors must drag themselves out of bed and race to their cars before they are ticketed. The second leg of the race involves driving to A-lot, and lasts about thirty seconds. The final leg, the walk from A-lot back to campus, typically takes athletes upwards of three hours.
The Open-Frat-Window Jump and Climb. ('04s only). While most students are permitted to enter fraternities through more normal channels such as the door, College policy requires that, each fall, freshmen must get substantially more creative to gain admittance. The judges look for two stylistic points when evaluating performances in this event: 1) athletes must get far enough into the window that fraternity members patrolling the outside grounds cannot pull them back out, and 2) after the window climb, athletes must immediately put on an air of cool upperclass nonchalance, despite the fact that they just came through the window and crashed in a heap on the dance floor. Freshmen women are also eligible to compete in a separate, related event, entitled "Smile, Bat your Eyes and Enter through the Front Door."
The Straight-Line Walk. Part of the Hanover Games' Weekend Night Session, competitors perform this event before a panel of judges, who are seated in a green minivan. Points are awarded for not falling over or booting on yourself.
The Cram and Dump. Most students participate in this event a couple of times per term, just prior to exams. While studying in those last couple of hours before that big test, championship athletes find it helps to imagine their brains as a five-gallon bucket. The bucket is filled up in the library, and then the competitor tries to walk it to his or her exam without spilling too much (Vivarin pills help plug up any leaks in the bucket) and dumps it all over his or her test paper. This has the added bonus of purging competitors' brains of their newfound knowledge, which frees up brain cells for more important tasks, like remembering which frat windows are usually unlocked for the Jump and Climb.
So even though most of us will never be able to throw a shotput 70 feet, do not lose heart -- we compete in our own games every day. Although as I write this, I am not excited for the A-lot Triathlon tomorrow morning.
