Exactly two weeks ago, I decided I would become a winter Olympian.

Since the beginning of the 2018 Winter Olympics, I have been glued to my television. On slow or busy days, I may only manage to squeeze in an hour’s worth of events. Some days — many days — I’ve consumed two hours, three hours, maybe even more.

There’s not an event I don’t like. From quirky curling to soaring ski jumping and graceful ice skaters, I watch it all. I spent a couple of hours last week learning the lingo and rules of curling. In snowboarding, I know the difference between a melon grab and a stalefish grab. Prior to 2018 I had never watched an entire game of ice hockey from beginning to end. Over the past two weeks, I’ve watched at least six.

On Wednesday the women’s bobsled team from Germany took gold after beating the US team by 0.07 of a second. The scores consist of three timed runs, combined. That means the difference between Germany’s three runs and the US’s three runs was seven-one hundredth’s of a second. All the timed races fascinate me, but when the differences are so amazingly slim, I find it incredible. Seven-one hundredths of a second is roughly 1/20 of the time it takes a human being to blink.

As the Olympians continue to compete, I wonder which event I would have the best chance at competing in. Maybe I could be the goalie for our hockey team (those guys don’t need to know how to skate, right?). I was pretty good on a skateboard, thirty years ago — surely I could pick up a snowboard and figure things out. If all else fails, I feel like curling is always an option. One guy throws a rock, one guy sweeps, and people are always either yelling or being yelled at. I have experience with all of those things.

The day before last, a winter storm rolled into Oklahoma, adding a layer of sleet and ice to everything. I managed not to leave the house Tuesday, but by Wednesday everyone was getting stir crazy and so we agreed to go out for dinner.

Susan wanted Mexican food and so we went to San Marcos, but they had closed due to the weather. Our second stop was Chileno’s; they too had closed early. Our third pick, Qdoba, braved the winter storm and remained open.

As I shuffled my way across the icy parking lot like an old man, I felt my Olympic dreams disappearing. Forget gliding gracefully across the stuff — I could barely get out of my car.

On the way home from dinner, some fool came around the corner of Rockwell and NW Expressway sideways. I was going slow enough that I was able to slide over into the center lane and get back into my own lane before any more cars arrived. For a split second I had dreams of steering a toboggan in the luge, but that quickly subsided.

Any final drops of hope were drained last night when I took the trash out. My legs quivered like Jell-O as I inched my way across the driveway, sack of trash in hand, over to the trash dumpster. It took every muscle I had to keep my feet underneath me and remain upright. I hate to say it, but I think the odds of me becoming a winter Olympian resemble one of the five Olympic rings: O.

Except skeleton. I could totally do the skeleton. Back in my day, we called that “sledding head first…”