Now that I’ve finally gotten over the Super Bowl, I have been enjoying the Sochi Olympics. Well, at least some of the Olympic events. Some I find boring; some I find puzzling; some I find absolutely insane.

I try to like the downhill skiing events. I really do. But mostly the participants are just skiing downhill at an unbelieveably fast and dangerous speed. I do like the ones who  spin in the air, though I always wonder, how did they talk themselves into doing that the first time? Was it on purpose?

Curling is fascinating and puzzling at the same time. I must admit I haven’t been able to actually watch a curling, what? match? game? event? from start to finish. I can’t seem to find it on the television. Perhaps it’s on live, at which time it is the middle of the night in AZ and I am sound asleep in my little bed. At any rate, I have decided that if I ever take up curling, I want to be the one who throws the what? ball? puck? doohicky? and then screams. I did enough sweeping in the bakery when I was younger.  I don’t want that particular job.

And what is up with the skeleton racing? The people who participate in that event are certifiably insane. Who thinks it’s a good idea to lay down on a tiny little metal sled wearing nothing more than a bike helmet like my 5-year-old granddaughter wears when she’s on her Razor scooter and race down a frozen track at 80 mph? At least the racers don’t have Barbie on their helmets. But I’m telling you, that helmet is not going to do a thing for them if they run into a frozen wall at 80 mph. They might as well have Barbie on the helmet because it’s not good for anything else.

Really, the only thing I really look forward to when it comes to any of the Winter Olympic events is the figure skating. I have been enjoying watching both the men and the women. I must admit, however, it was somewhat unpleasant to sit next to my husband and watch Yuzuru Hanyu, the Japanese man who took first place in the men’s long program last week. Bill simply couldn’t get over the fact that the man was wearing a blouse. It didn’t matter how well Hanyu skated. Bill simply couldn’t forgive the blouse choice.

As an aside, my best friend going all the way back to elementary school  still laughs when she recalls trying to teach me to ice skate at the skating pond in Columbus when I was 10 or 12. At her urging, I skated onto thin ice, quite literally, and one of my feet fell through. My guardian angel kept me from falling completely through the ice while she laughed. The pond was only a couple of feet deep, but still…. Junior high pride and all that. She got her comeuppance, however, when she went to the warming hut and the back of her navy blue pea coat caught on fire. Our guardian angels were kept very busy. No future Olympians among us.

As for my love of Olympic figure skating, blame Dorothy Hamill.

My blog is the musings of a baby boomer, and Dorothy Hamill is a creature of the Baby Boomer Generation. Despite my increasingly failing 60-year-old memory, I recall like it was yesterday what it was like to watch Ms. Hamill on the ice. She was remarkable in the 1976 Olympic games.

First off, there was that haircut. Oh, oh, oh, did I love that haircut. And I wasn’t the only one. That cut could be seen on girls all over the United States in 1976-77. I high-tailed it down to the beauty shop to get my hair cut in the Dorothy Hamill “wedge.”

Hamill’s performance in 1976 was nearly flawless. She took home gold medals in both the short and the long programs, earning first-place scores from all nine judges. She is also credited with developing a new skating move, dubbed the “Hamill Camel”, a camel spin that turned into a sit spin.

I was curious to see how her skating compared to the skating of today’s Olympians, so I watched a You Tube video of her performance. Yes, she was masterful. She was beautiful and graceful. And her hair would spin around. Oh, the glory of it all.

But her performance today wouldn’t even begin to compete with current skaters, who do triple quad thingamahookies, give a leap, and then do them again.  But no one can spin on the ice like Dorothy Hamill could. And there was that camel spin that turned into a sit spin. So pretty.

However, she had to pick up her own flowers instead of having skating fledglings to do it as they do nowadays.

There have been many great skaters since Dorothy Hamill (Kristi Yamaguchi? Glorious.) But Ms. Hamill is the one I will always remember. Because she is a baby boomer, just like me.

She was dismal on Dancing With the Stars, however.