'What just happened?' ... 'I don't know, but I think I like it'

What's going on?

Saturdays are extremely slow at my job. It’s not unusual to turn on the television that sits in the dining room to a sporting event and try to catch bits and pieces of it in the sporadic moments of working. This Saturday was no different. Everything was cleaned and stocked and there weren’t any customers so I sat down at a table and switched on some sports. Pretty soon a co-worker joined me at the table. Then a few minutes later another co-worker joined us. Shortly after that my supervisor made the group a foursome.

Typically during the summer the television has been on a golf tournament or a baseball game. Today it was on fencing coverage during the 2012 London Summer Olympics.

We sat there and we watched two Italians fencers compete in something called women’s foil. I really don’t know exactly what that is or means, but the gist of it appeared to be to see how many times you can stick somebody in their body armor with your sword-like weapon. For the purposes of this piece I just looked up what “foil” means … it’s actually the name of the aforementioned “sword-like weapon”… you see, doesn’t that take some of the fun out of fencing already.

None of us four really had any damn clue what was going on. We didn’t know how the scoring system worked. We didn’t know what the lights meant. We didn’t know any of the rules. I was shocked, and I think my feelings were shared, to find out that the event had three periods.

I do think I was the most fascinated with the sport out of the group. It’s not the most exciting sporting event I’ve ever seen by any means, but I didn’t for one second find it boring. However, maybe that had to do with the exceptionally slow pace of the work day. But, it’s certainly not one of the five or maybe even 10 most boring Summer Olympic sports.

It’s something that I’ve spent minimal time seeing before in Olympic action and would enjoy watching again, though I don’t know if I’ll catch it again during these games. In my entire life I probably won’t see enough fencing action to ever know exactly what’s going on (when and where, after all, can you see fencing when it’s not an Olympic games?).

The fact that four of us were captivated together by this foil event for the maybe 15 minutes that we watched before returning to our responsibilities was unique because it really explains the allure and specialty of the Summer Olympics. Typically none of us would really care about this event, but for one moment on a quiet Saturday afternoon it captured us. Why? Because it’s the Olympics and you must watch the Olympics.

Sundays aren’t typically as slow as Saturdays at work, but they are often slow enough to have moments were there isn’t anything to do … maybe tomorrow will find us entranced in some water polo action or perhaps some field hockey. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. It’s just a thrill two weeks every four years.