By now the U.S. Olympic men's basketball players have put away their bronze medals (deep inside the sock drawer) and probably are wondering why they bothered to go in the first place."One of them told me he felt let down because people back home were rooting against them," Swin Cash, a member of U.S. women's gold-medal team and the Shock, told me.Well, that's a shame. No athlete should sense his country rooting against him. As defenders of this Dream Team have said: "Don't get mad at these guys. They're the ones who gave up their summers."
I have never won an Olympic gold medal, so it is not for me to tell someone what he should do with his. But certain "experts" last week didn't let that stop them. They strongly suggested Paul Hamm, the U.S. Olympic gymnast, should take his gold medal, press it into the chest of his South Korean competitor, and say, "Here, this is yours. You keep it."
How do you eulogize a rival? Joe Falls, a man who did the same job as me for the newspaper that competes with mine, died last week. He lost a long battle with diabetes. He was 76. He couldn't type anymore. He couldn't walk steps. Last year, with a simple, elegant column, he told his many fans good-bye after six decades in the business."It's been a joy," he wrote, "thank you for being there with me."
What is a chair? What is its intent? To provide rest after a hard day? To give order to the dinner table? To pull up in front of the TV set? All of the above? Yet a chair is never more than an in-between stop. In time you rise and get on with your life.Unless it is a wheelchair.Unless you cannot rise.Unless, your life, like Mo Gerhardt's, is shadowed by a congenital disease like Duchenne's muscular dystrophy, an often fatal affliction that robs you of the protein you need to build muscle. In cases like his, a chair looms the way the horizon looms for a setting sun.
Ialways laugh when politicians tell voters who is "fit to lead." It reminds me of a cat telling mice where they should hide.Last week, John Kerry told us John Edwards, his new vice presidential candidate, was fit to lead, even though earlier this year he criticized Edwards, saying the White House "was no place for on-the-job training."Edwards, for his part, told groups of cheering fans that his new boss was fit to lead, even though a few months ago, Edwards was doing his best to knock Kerry out of the race.
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
