Addiction: “the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.”
I’m scared. Really. We’re half way through the Olympics, and I’m already in fear that the above-mentioned trauma has hit our family.
It started slowly like most addictions. Being swimming fans, we DVR’d as many of the sessions as the poor box would allow. This gave us hours upon hours of content to view. We loved it. Sure, speeding through things like the Equestrian events (I mean using horses in water polo is just plain cruel), and badminton (sandbagging is just not right) to get to the swimming events, you would think all was fine and we could “quit” at anytime.
Then it happened. We would pause on selected events to check them out. Wow, handball and rowing, let’s watch. Sweet. Wow, skeet shooting and archery, let’s watch. Sweet. Wow, ping-pong and volleyball, let’s watch. Sweet. Women’s weightlifting, WTF?, let’s watch. Um, not so sweet.
You get the picture, we just kept adding sports until we realized we’re going to bed really late most nights and not answering the phone. Friends think we are out-of-town. The worst part of the addiction is due to the time difference with London, we have to stay away from all news content and social media during the day so we don’t accidentally see the final results.
Yup, our day is just one big spoiler alert!
With track & field just getting started, I’ve decided we’d better find an “out” or intervention of some kind. The good news is that most experts say the best first step is recognizing that you have a problem and then dealing with it…
Some medical doctors will probably say this isn’t a real addiction, yet, I’m still convinced some detox program is in order. Maybe its a simple as just breaking the “spell” we’re under, so I’ve come up with the following remedies which should provide the cure:
- Make the Olympic theme your ring tone
- Play a continual loop of Bob Costas talking
- Listen to Ryan Lochte’s view on Keynesian Economic Theory
- Show endless videos of gymnasts crying (all countries welcome)
- Lump all of Andrea Kremer’s worst questions in one video (“What was it like to lose?”)
- Try my own hand at the pommel horse (so I can break the arm which holds the TV controller)
- Remind ourselves that ex-Olympians can turn into Kardashian family members
- Just turn off the bloody TV and carry on a conversation with others (not as effective since the entire family possesses smartphones)
Or, the Olympics could just end, and we can go on to regularly scheduled programming!
Go USA…but hurry up and be done with it!