JOY ALONG THE WAY: OLYMPIC FEVER 104 DEGREES

I'm beginning to get feverish from a malady which, so far as I know, is not listed in medical books or brochures. I call it Vicariously Induced Muscle Soreness, Breathlessness and Dizzy High Flight Syndrome.

I know a cure for it, but I don't choose to take it, such cure being just not to watch the Olympic games.

I will sit on my couch, note what lanes the American competitors are in for the various races and hurdles and so want them to win that I'll "run" and "jump" with them. My muscles will tighten up and relax as our runners will alternately fall behind or gain the lead again. And my pulse will go from four to the bar to 16.

When the lithesome young ladies are twisting and swinging from the high bars, I'll "twist" and "swing" with them. My fingers will tremble with fear that I'm going to miss a crucial grasp of the next bar and fall to the floor, a bundle of broken bones and a hank of hair.

The turn of the swimmers at the end of the lanes will stretch me so I may slide from my reviewing stand and incur bruises somewhere.

Next morning I will find it difficult to get out of bed from the vicarious competition in the Olympics.

The pole vaults will really enhance my lower back pain, maybe exploding a veterbrae and the cord that runs through.

In addition to this "strenuous" exercise, there will be other attitudinal and emotional changes. All winter and spring I rather resent "Shaq" Stockton, Ewing, Hardaway, Miller, et al when they were giving the Bulls a little minor trouble, but now they'll be my friends as they dribble and pass to Pippen and Mike and jam the basketball down the netted throat. This changing of loyalties from fierce favoritism will give me a melt-down feeling as if I'm coming loose at the seams. I will walk, wobbly, to the fridge for something with get-togetherness ingredients. Gatorade? Nah. A piece of chocolate pie, enhanced.

Then, when I see our American winner standing on the high block underneath the American flag and hear the National Anthem being played, my already hyped-up excitement will reach on upward to the point of tears, and I'll be satisfyingly but emotionally drained.

You think I'm an Olympic fan? Yessiree, and I thank the person who, in Speakout, thought I should have carried the torch all the way through Cape Girardeau. I would have loved that, riding as a passenger on a Honda, or in my little red wagon with a pony pulling. I'm increasing my daily exercise to a one-inch push-up a day, plus a 15-second longer ride on my stationary bike so as to be in shape when the next torch comes through. Why, I may be able to ride in one of those Indian sledges, or travois, pulled, hopefully, my Mangles' six-hitch Belgians. I'd be careful to hold the torch away from those swishing blond tales. My, my, what summer heat can do to the imagination!

The Olympia Valley where the early games were played had stadiums, a hippodrome, statues of winners, etc. But it was near a river and in earthquake prone territory and somewhere along the way became covered with 20 feet of gravel and soil. However, excavations have recovered some relics of the early games.

Near a river and in earthquake prone territory! Does that ring a bell? Do you suppose our Civil War soldier statue and fountain might some day be 20 feet under? Will the river resume its course or go around by way of Fredericktown or Peoria? Where will the college dome be found? The flood wall? Flint Hill? Will some peculiar formation of horse skeletons, appearing to have been hauling something resembling a travois be found? With a human skeleton nearby? Anyway, viva! the Olympics!

Jean Bell Mosley is a Cape Girardeau resident and a longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.