cheech

Under the category of Things You Might Not Know About Me, or Things About Me You'd Find Ridiculous-- you probably wouldn't think I would get teary-eyed reading a passage from a book by Oksana Baiul, listen to an entire Frank Zappa compilation,
then read the Oksana Baiul passage again and get teary-eyed again.

I got this book when it was being weeded from a library I used to work in. "Weeded" is a library term; it means "if nobody buys this shit in the book sale, it's going in the garbage". Apparently, nobody thought Oksana was good enough to read about anymore. She'd gotten tall, gained weight, had a drinking problem, and besides only the most RECENT Olympic darlings' get checked out by kids, and 1994 is a loooong time ago...

It's called Secrets of Skating, which is a lie in that you ain't gonna learn how to triple-axle, or put together a good diet or exercise regimen, or anything to really do with how to skate....but it IS a guide on how to be a centered, beautiful human being, and that can't hurt, unless you're Tonya Harding.

The passage that makes me teary (and it's a lot more effective with the pictures) is the intro, the very first words in the book, even before the credits:

"When I am old and in my rocking chair,


I don't want to open my book and say to my children or grandchildren, 'Okay, I have this World Championship medal from 1993, and I have this Olympic gold metal from 1994,' end of story. Of course I'm proud of those achievements, but I want to open my book and say....


I was a SWAN, I was a BUTTERFLY, I was a FLOWER.


It is not the scores or medals I want to remember, but my expression, the way I skated, the way I expressed myself."

The skating pics that accompany 3 of these lines above are pretty skating shots, but the swan/ butterfly/ flower page has a field of flowers, with Oksana's face at the bottom of the page. She looks like she's completely at peace, ecstatic.

In case you think it's another case of a sports star acting phony-nice, you should see further on in the book, pages 60-61. It's a two-page spread of Oksana in practice...in the act of falling over. The accompanying text:
"Sometimes you trip or fall, it just happens. You never know when you are going to die, so in skating you never know when you are going to fall. You just don't know. When I fall down I don't feel like I did something wrong. So what. Actually, I love to fall, because I can feel where my body is, where my legs are, where my arms are, where my butt is."

I love Oksana.

But I loved her before I saw the book, back when I saw her on Oprah talking about her depression, subsequent alcoholism, and car accident. There was a bit, I can't remember the exact dialogue, but it went something like this:
OB - "I had been drinking long islands iced teas..."
OW - 'Long island iced teas?"
OB - "Yes....about 12..."
OW - "TWELVE?!?! A little thing like you? How in the world did you drink 12 long island iced teas??"
OB - [completely straightfaced] ".....I am Ukranian."

So anyway, this is how I come to write to you about Oksana instead of Chris Hitchens or the Chicago 7. Maybe tomorrow, one of those two...

...ps - the Zappa's pretty hip too...