“One World One Dream”…and Tanks Too

I was out soccering last night with Numbers Two and Three and their teams in the opening tournament of the year, so I haven’t caught much of the opening ceremonies yet. Scrolling through the 4-plus hours of recording on my DVR and hitting the highlights is on my to-do list today, after more soccer matches, mowing the lawn, my weekly elliptical trainer workout at the gym…phew, I should get a gold medal for doing all that.

Number One, who was watching at home, called during the soccer matches and said it all seemed a little “creepy,” in a “if 1.3 billion people are capable of putting on this kind of show, what else are they capable of doing?” sort of way. But when we got back to the house, he said, “That was the most incredible thing I have ever seen in my life.”

Granted, he’s not quite 20-years-old, but to have a worldly-wise Gen Y guy gushing like that, it must have been really something.

To get an idea of what it might have been like to actually stand in “The Bird’s Nest” during the opening ceremony, check out this uber-cool 360 sensation at The New York Times.

Our two Huntsvillians on the ground have also filed dispatches, HT sports columnist Mark McCarter here, and backstroke gold medal hopeful Margaret “You Can’t Holz ‘er Back” Hoelzer here.

It turns out that one of Margaret’s suitemates is the forever-young 40-something swimming sensation Dara Torres. How many 41-year-old mommies do you know who look like this?

So, away we go. “One World One Dream” sounds nice, and I hope the Chinese can pull it off. But on the day when an estimated 4 billion people had TV access to these opening ceremonies, there was the sobering reminder, that good intentions notwithstanding, the world is still full of tanks too.