Olympics bring memories of a friend and a faux pas
Jim Glynn
"Curling? What’s that?" I asked my friend Dave Krause. He had suggested that we go to some mysterious place in Mountain View, which – at the time – was ominous enough. We lived in Palo Alto, and the short drive to Mountain View was like trekking to some Third World country.
Dave was a very good friend, but I didn’t really understand him well. His brain functioned several tiers above mine. For one thing, he was a champion chess player. You know, the kind who says, "Mate in six moves."
At that time in my life, about 17 years of age, I still had trouble figuring out how the "horse" moved. In fact, even today I have to think twice about it. (For non-chess players, the knight – a piece which usually looks like a horse’s head – moves two squares plus one square perpendicular to its original direction. And, it can jump over any pieces that happen to be in its way.)
Moreover, while most boys of that age kept copies of Playboy under their beds, Dave had a huge box of books on chess strategy. However, I don’t mean to imply that he lacked any interest in the "fairer sex," as girls were called during my youth. In fact, we both had a somewhat romantic interest in Mandy, but not at the same time.
Anyway, I was not as adventurous as Dave and had some reservations about delving into some foreign sport. Kids of my generation only played "all American" games, like baseball, football, and basketball. Soccer was not a major pastime, and golf was sort of a rich, older man’s dalliance. Besides, neither was an American invention.
When I expressed my reticence, Dave told me not to worry because he’d met a man named Skip who would show me the ropes. So, we got in my green and rust 1951 Studebaker and rolled off into unknown territory. (By the way, the rust was not a color; it was ferrous oxide, as we’d learned in chemistry class at Cubberley High.)
Throwing Stones
In Mountain View, Dave guided me to a building that resembled a squat warehouse, which is pretty much the way that I recall all of that city looking. When we entered, I was fascinated by the floor, which was mostly ice.
A former New Yorker, I hadn’t seen ice since my family moved to California shortly before my 16th birthday. Needless to say, my interest jumped several levels.
In my pre-teen years, I always looked forward to the lake in Prospect Park freezing so that I could go ice skating. But, by the time I was 13 or 14, gangs had taken over the park, and it was too dangerous to go there with only bladed shoes for a weapon. So, this was going to be a special treat.
After we rented galoshes to pull over our street shoes, Dave sought out Skip, only to find out that there were several Skips in the building. Skip, as it turned out, was the title of a team leader.
Someone directed us to a group of men dressed in plaids and topped with tams. Most of them held household brooms. My original anxiety returned with a vengeance. What, I shuddered, had Dave gotten us into?
"So," asked one of them, "Can you boys handle a 40-pound stone?"
Dave answered in the affirmative for both of us. I looked for the nearest exit.
"Well, then," said another man, "Let’s see you put a rock on the button, or at least in the house."
Uh-oh. Having become a Palo Altan, I knew that those folks in Mountain View were to be viewed with suspicion, but I didn’t realize that they spoke a different language. The whole experience was getting spookier by the minute.
Dave and I looked at each other. Dave and I looked at the man who had been speaking. The man looked at Dave and me.
"Have you never played the game then?" he inquired.
Toeing the Line
A pleasant man assumed the role of mentor and taught us how to push a heavy weight down an icy alley toward a target, very much in the fashion of deck shuffleboard. After a few minutes of practice, we were put on a team with other athletes. Not knowing the rules, we simply did what we were told.
On my first attempt, Skip called a foul. I was terrified. What had I done? I was pretty good at following directions, and I thought that I’d pushed my stone as I’d been taught.
"Crossed the hog line," he told me. What? "And, you need to begin at the hack." Hmm? "Finally, don’t deliver your stone until I’ve called for an in-turn or an out-turn." Huh?
After a lecture and a bit more instruction, I managed to release my stone, reduce my tension, and take a much-needed breath. But, the recovery period was short-lived because I was immediately handed a broom and told to get out in the lane.
When Dave pushed his stone, with a gentle out-turn as Skip had demanded, my fellow teammates began yelling at me to sweep.
"Too much weight," Skip bellowed. "Tap it! Tap it!"
I looked at my teammate who also had a broom, and followed his lead. He jabbed the broom’s bristles into the ice in front of the hunk of granite in order to slow it down. Then, conditions changed.
"Pebble, pebble!" screamed Skip. Now the other broom wielder started sweeping furiously. I followed suit.
Skip threw up his hands. "Oh no, youngster," he shook his head, and tears came to his eyes. "You’ve burned the rock."
Unknowingly, my broom had touched the stone, and it had to be removed from play, giving our opponents the opening they needed to win the game.
Last week, as I watched the U.S. team lose to a nail-biting match to Norway in British Columbia, I understood the angst of our
Olympians. However, unlike the custom in other sports, the winners have to buy a round for the losers. It's called "The Spirit of
Curling. 
