VQU + My Life as a Gymnast UPDATE! With Video of Olga AND Nadia!!!!
First the VQU: Just got back from the ER. Not the one I work at; in fact, I didn't go to work. I was minding my own business today, trying to get rid of a perfectly mild migraine .... my first in a month, again, contributing to my theory that now that I have them relatively under control they're just going to come on a particular day of the month. It should have gone away with one baby aspirin. So I took one, lay down for about 10 minutes and --SNAP! I felt this very odd (to me) sharp pain in the back of my head, which is not where I'm used to my head hurting. It lasted about a minute, and was followed by my regular old, icepick-in-the-corner-of-one-eye migraine getting worse and a feeling like a rubber band around my head. I reluctantly called in to work, with the knowledge that one of my "needs improvement" on my eval was "attendance", then called my neuro, and sure enough he wanted me to get me straight thither...to the ER, that is. I picked Oakwood Canton because it's usually quick and if it isn't you're supposed to get free movie tickets. I think I'm getting free movie tickets. Anyway, they did a CT scan, and, no, I didn't have a stroke or an aneurism or anything, at least anything a CT scan would pick up. And they were nice enough to give me a shot, which is good because my big guns abortive, Migranal, is nowhere to be found in the pharmacies of Wayne County until tomorrow.
So now I have no headache, I look like a fool because I have no documentation anything bizarre happened....and the note they gave me at the ER says they want me to stay home tomorrow too, but I don't want to use it because I only had one sick day left. Wahhh! I hate having a chronic illness. At least the headache is gone.
As for my life as a gymnast....I remember one of the rare times we saw a glimpse of the life of people in the Soviet Union was when Olga Korbut was in the Olympics. They had a little biopic about her, showing her at home with her family, and she mentioned in it that she loved to listen to the Beatles. Wow, I thought, I have something in common with this girl! I watched all the gymnastic competitions from then on that year and idolized Olga.
But it was Nadia Comienicz, the Romanian star of the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, that I really wanted to be. Olga was much older than I but Nadia was I think about my age. Not only that, but my family was traveling through Canada in our big Champion RV that year...we even went to Montreal, although we didn't have tickets for the Olympic village (I do remember we did a lot of laundry there.) We didn't have a TV, but listened to the Olympics on the radio and saw articles in the newspaper and when I heard Nadia interviewed, I wanted to be her friend, no, I wanted to BE her.
Which would have been funny if you had known me. I was fourteen, about to enter the 10th grade at Northville high school. But as young as I was, I was 5' 7" and weighed a clumsy 220 pounds. I was at the height of my weight until my thyroid died in the 90's. I looked very goofy on a balance beam. Two years earlier, however, in our Catholic school, I had had a very kind teacher who admired my tenacity and I had actually done OK on the unparallel bars...although we used the hard aluminum kind, not the flexible flimsy kind you see the tiny girls use in the Olympics. He told my mom, "If everyone in the class tried as hard as Kelly could, I'd be so proud of them." His message seemed to be, she really does awful, but she really tries hard! I was sort of a "Little Miss Sunshine" of the gymnastics section of gym in the eighth grade of Our Lady of Victory.
But two years later, as we drove from Montreal to the maritime provinces, and I impressed my dad by translating the Quebec street signs for him, and as we enjoyed the covered street markets of St. John's (which I remember every time I hear a bird trapped in the roof of a grocery store), or the Scottish festiva and Gaelic brogue on Cape Breton Island, or the wind-swept marshes of Prince Edward Isle, I sometimes sat in the back of the bus pretending to be chatting to Nadia. Sometimes I'd pretend we were her road crew, or, again, that I was her, preparing for my next big match.
Maybe it was because I wanted to be small. Maybe it was because I wanted people to love me, and I was afraid they didn't (that was primarily because I was drawn to a very abusive woman I called my "best friend" who did things like have birthday parties at skating arenas inviting everyone but me). Maybe it was, again, the mystery of Eastern Europe and what the Iron Curtain held behind it and a need to know that the people there were just like us.
Thankfully, I had the presence of mind not to let Nadia take over my vacation, and I remember quite a bit of that trip; I think it was my favorite we took as a family.
I don't know very much about Nadia Comenicz today; I remember she had had an affair with her married coach and could not understand why Westerners raised an eyebrow at that. In between, I lost a lot of weight, got crazy with dancing, not gymnastics, then got chronic migraines, and got fat again.
I know that gymnastics, as well as some of the other sports Soviet women excelled in, did a great deal for diplomacy between the US and USSR....not just between the State Department and USSR foreign ministry, but in the hearts of the people as well.
Here, most important US news commentator of the day.....Chevy Chase....introduces a segment in which Olga Korbut herself analyzes Comenicz brilliant moves!!!!
http://video.aol.com/partner/hulu/saturday-night-live-weekend-update-olga-korbut/Y7j0W3_1vtDlHNFVxPB3dDosxeF92nDk
So now I have no headache, I look like a fool because I have no documentation anything bizarre happened....and the note they gave me at the ER says they want me to stay home tomorrow too, but I don't want to use it because I only had one sick day left. Wahhh! I hate having a chronic illness. At least the headache is gone.
As for my life as a gymnast....I remember one of the rare times we saw a glimpse of the life of people in the Soviet Union was when Olga Korbut was in the Olympics. They had a little biopic about her, showing her at home with her family, and she mentioned in it that she loved to listen to the Beatles. Wow, I thought, I have something in common with this girl! I watched all the gymnastic competitions from then on that year and idolized Olga.
But it was Nadia Comienicz, the Romanian star of the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, that I really wanted to be. Olga was much older than I but Nadia was I think about my age. Not only that, but my family was traveling through Canada in our big Champion RV that year...we even went to Montreal, although we didn't have tickets for the Olympic village (I do remember we did a lot of laundry there.) We didn't have a TV, but listened to the Olympics on the radio and saw articles in the newspaper and when I heard Nadia interviewed, I wanted to be her friend, no, I wanted to BE her.
Which would have been funny if you had known me. I was fourteen, about to enter the 10th grade at Northville high school. But as young as I was, I was 5' 7" and weighed a clumsy 220 pounds. I was at the height of my weight until my thyroid died in the 90's. I looked very goofy on a balance beam. Two years earlier, however, in our Catholic school, I had had a very kind teacher who admired my tenacity and I had actually done OK on the unparallel bars...although we used the hard aluminum kind, not the flexible flimsy kind you see the tiny girls use in the Olympics. He told my mom, "If everyone in the class tried as hard as Kelly could, I'd be so proud of them." His message seemed to be, she really does awful, but she really tries hard! I was sort of a "Little Miss Sunshine" of the gymnastics section of gym in the eighth grade of Our Lady of Victory.
But two years later, as we drove from Montreal to the maritime provinces, and I impressed my dad by translating the Quebec street signs for him, and as we enjoyed the covered street markets of St. John's (which I remember every time I hear a bird trapped in the roof of a grocery store), or the Scottish festiva and Gaelic brogue on Cape Breton Island, or the wind-swept marshes of Prince Edward Isle, I sometimes sat in the back of the bus pretending to be chatting to Nadia. Sometimes I'd pretend we were her road crew, or, again, that I was her, preparing for my next big match.
Maybe it was because I wanted to be small. Maybe it was because I wanted people to love me, and I was afraid they didn't (that was primarily because I was drawn to a very abusive woman I called my "best friend" who did things like have birthday parties at skating arenas inviting everyone but me). Maybe it was, again, the mystery of Eastern Europe and what the Iron Curtain held behind it and a need to know that the people there were just like us.
Thankfully, I had the presence of mind not to let Nadia take over my vacation, and I remember quite a bit of that trip; I think it was my favorite we took as a family.
I don't know very much about Nadia Comenicz today; I remember she had had an affair with her married coach and could not understand why Westerners raised an eyebrow at that. In between, I lost a lot of weight, got crazy with dancing, not gymnastics, then got chronic migraines, and got fat again.
I know that gymnastics, as well as some of the other sports Soviet women excelled in, did a great deal for diplomacy between the US and USSR....not just between the State Department and USSR foreign ministry, but in the hearts of the people as well.
Here, most important US news commentator of the day.....Chevy Chase....introduces a segment in which Olga Korbut herself analyzes Comenicz brilliant moves!!!!
http://video.aol.com/partner/hulu/saturday-night-live-weekend-update-olga-korbut/Y7j0W3_1vtDlHNFVxPB3dDosxeF92nDk