But at least I have video. (Oh yeah - I'm that guy, too.) Here's T, paying her dues on the hardscrabble mats of North Adams, a tough town whose mean streets pump out competitive gymnasts the way some burgs do boxers:
But the real test is when the apparata come out. Here's where we separate the pretenders and the frauds from the cold-blooded killers, the wheat from the chaff, the whiners and nobodies from the contenders with the grit and determination of champions. Watch...if you dare.
The crucible where gymnastics stars in North Adams are hardened for competition is the semi-legal, always-controversial, one-on-one contest known as "The Meatgrinder." Two gymnasts. One mat. No rules. Go. This, folks, is not for the squeamish:
Home! Supper! Grab your trunks, Q - Swimmin' lesson time! My god, we are such an overprogrammed lot sometimes. Now, where North Adams is known for its gymnasts, Williamstown is a place where kids learn fast that to survive, you've got to be willing to do whatever it takes in the dreaded...Williams...College...Pool. There's a part in here where, I swear, the water is actually tinged with blood. Remember Czechoslovakia - USSR, water polo, 1968? This is worse. There's a kid you see floating in from the right toward the end of the video. I was there, man. They spent ten minutes reviving him.
Successfully showered, Q crows his victory. He kept his mouth closed for the smile to keep the pressure on the tooth we had just pushed back in. That Jakob Fink throws a mean elbow:
Hoo, boy. I tell you what. If our family were a movie, it'd be NC-17. Pick your jaws off the floor, people, time for bed. Come on, now, move along. Show's over. Nothing to see here.
2 comments:
It goes without saying that these videos are going to make for some fantastic embarrassment in Quinn and Tess' later life. . . I'm picturing wedding rehearsal dinner . . . video montage . . . good times.
Indeed. For is it not written: "He who controls the camera, controls history"?
Post a Comment