I stayed up past my bedtime last night watching the opening ceremonies. This post isn't really adoption related, unless you count the fact that I'm adopting from China, and we watched the Chinese Olympic team march in. And my two Guatlings love to see the Guatemalan team. Apparently NBC hasn't gotten the memo that there are many children in the US who were born in Guatemala, and they cut to a commercial break when the Guatemalan team marched in. The boys were very disappointed. When they came back from the break, the announcers did say something like, "While you were in the bathroom, we also had the Guatemalan team," or something like that. Anyway, I think the motto of the British opening ceremonies was, "We can't compete with the Beijing Olympics, so let's not even try." I guess I could look on the bright side, that I learned a lot about British history from the performance. Long ago, there was a big tree on a grassy hill, and people popped out of it. There were peasants and they loved the grass and danced around the maypole. Then the Industrial Revolution came, and everyone spent a lot of time hammering and drumming and most people had really dirty faces. The air was very dirty and they were too busy drumming to wash their faces. After that comes rap and the Beatles, and the Queen parachuting from a helicopter with James Bond. They left that part out when I was in college and took English History Since 1688.
The part that really got my attention, the sense of saying to myself, "Huh? What?," was that part where a bunch of nurses and doctors danced in pushing kids on hospital beds. I've watched a lot of opening ceremonies, and that is a first! No kidding, the theme was British children's literature, and national healthcare. The announcers, straining to make some sense of it, observed that the author of Peter Pan donated his royalties to a children's hospital. I can't even imagine what you would have to be smoking to put those two things together. Part of my college career, I had a second major in English literature. Professors of literature really like creative interpretations of literature, but I would LOVE to see the reaction of one of them if I had written a paper along those lines. So, these kids were all in hospital beds, although they all looked quite healthy, and they were all reading storybooks. Then there are all sorts of scary things and Cruella de Ville and the announcers helpfully said that this the stuff of children's dreams and nightmares. Most kids would be scared enough about being wheeled around in a hospital bed, especially if it was by some really nutty looking nurses who dance around a lot. My kids were watching last night and they wanted to know, when the beds came wheeling in, "What are they doing to those kids?" After the monsters came a whole formation of Mary Poppins look alikes, who chased out the bad guys and then they made the kids go to bed.
The best part of the night was the performance by Mr. Bean. I guess it shows what kind of a performance it was, when the best part was a man making funny faces. Mr. Bean is very funny and a great British export. Although almost anything could be more entertaining than a dance routine celebrating socialized medicine. I guess you save a lot on healthcare costs if you have such fit doctors and nurses. I think they should have put Mr. Bean in charge of the whole thing.
