I Just Read About That…

The Believer occasionally publishes first person narratives.  They’re usually relatively short but are insightful and poignant.  After reading one particular story the events described below converged in my head.  When I wrote this piece I had originally called it “Piece for The Believer” because well, that’s who it was written for.  I’m not upset that they rejected it, but I’m also not going to submit it anywhere else because I can’t think of any place else where it would fit. So, it might as well go somewhere!  [This is a slightly modified version]

[WRITTEN: April 2009] “Miracle Memory”

Recently my work had a staff training day.  It was yet another of those in-house services in which they pay people to create acronyms for success, and to encourage us all to read Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.  This particular training was about Teamwork (always capitalized).  The meeting proceeded apace, finding clever ways to say the same thing for five hours, until she told us that after lunch we would be treated to some clips from a movie that we would find inspiring in its look at teamwork.

When lunch was finished, she unveiled the movie: Miracle.  According to IMDB, Miracle is

The inspiring story of the team that transcended its sport and united a nation with a new feeling of hope. Based on the true story of one of the greatest moments in sports history, the tale captures a time and place where differences could be settled by games and a cold war could be put on ice. In 1980, the United States Ice Hockey team’s coach, Herb Brooks, took a ragtag squad of college kids up against the legendary juggernaut from the Soviet Union at the Olympic Games. Despite the long odds, Team USA carried the pride of a nation yearning from a distraction from world events. With the world watching the team rose to the occasion, prompting broadcaster Al Michaels’ now famous question, to the millions viewing at home: Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”

And of course, what better display of teamwork could there be than an underdog team winning a gold medal?

I instantly bristled upon hearing that this was our movie.  One of my strongest non-family related memories is of watching the U.S. Olympic team skating to victory over the U.S.S.R. in the 1980 Olympics.  I didn’t watch the whole game (I didn’t become a fan of hockey until the late 1990s), but I tuned in during the third period right around when Mike Eruzione scored the go-ahead goal.

I was eleven years old.  I had recently been allowed to move my bedroom to our finished attic, which afforded me ample privacy. When Eruzione scored that goal, I was hooked.  I stopped whatever I was doing (probably playing darts) and I flopped on my bed and sat, eyes glued to the TV.  I was tense, excited and ever so proud.

Having grown up during the escalation of the Cold War, I knew but one thing: the Soviets were an Evil Empire, they were monolithic, and they were massive.  During the Olympic build up, I also learned that they ruled the hockey rink.  The United States, on the other hand, was a bunch of good guys, young kids, scrapping against the formidable Goliath.  Heck, Red Dawn could have been a true story in my mind.

When the last ten seconds were counted down, and the U.S. team threw their sticks into the air, and Al Michaels shouted “this impossible dream come true,” I leapt on my bed, I shouted out loud, I danced around my room.  Had I access to car horns I would have honked them.  It is my first memory in which I was unquestioningly proud to be American.  I felt as if I had actually achieved something.

Memories are never reliable—seemingly every day a new study shows that our memories are less reliable than we realize– so maybe Al Michaels didn’t say that while sticks flew in the air.  I had also convinced my self that it was this game against the USSR that won our team the gold, which is indisputably false.  That came with a win against Finland in their next game.  In fact, maybe most of my memories are from the replays and the videotapes and every other instance of that Olympic moment that I have seen over the years.  And yet, the more I sat in this team building seminar, the more troubled I was that I would have to watch this movie.

When the movie was released, I thought about seeing it.  I mean, after all, it was a proud moment for me.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was an intensely private memory, one that I didn’t want to be altered by a movie maker’s own interpretation of the events.  And, in a nutshell, I didn’t want my Olympic memory to contain Kurt Russell (no offense, Snake Plissken).

When I got home from work that night, there was a package from Constellation Records (home of Godspeed You Black Emperor and countless other Canadian post rock gods).  They had just released their first DVD, Empires of Tin, which, according to their website is

a stunning, hallucinatory collaboration between defiantly independent New York filmmaker Jem Cohen, musicians Vic Chesnutt, Guy Picciotto (Fugazi), members of Silver Mt. Zion, The Quavers, and the wonderful organizers of the Vienna International Film Festival, who commissioned the initial work and are co-releasing the DVD with Constellation.

I had ordered it because I trust Constellation to release things I’ll enjoy, and although I didn’t know much about it, it featured members of A Silver Mt Zion and Vic Chesnutt, so I was looking forward to it. The movie turned out to be a series of still pictures and short movies (a few seconds at most) projected on a screen with the musicians playing somewhat harrowing background songs.  For a full explanation of the movie, please see http://www.cstrecords.com/promo/cst056/sections/statement.php.

One segment of the movie contained a series of images from Ground Zero: the Manhattan skyline with black smoke billowing through the frame.  The music was quiet and somber.  And scene after scene showed the black smoke: never getting close to Ground Zero itself, just distant shots showing how far the smoke had carried.  It was surprisingly moving.  And yet, as I watched this, I grew tense, hoping: please don’t show footage of the planes crashing into the buildings.  I wasn’t sure if I thought Jem would recreate the footage (an unlikely thing as all of the footage in the film was actual photos) or if he would include newsreel footage (again very unlikely as all the footage in the film was his own).  In all common sense, he would never include that footage—it would stand out as a glaring exception to his own work—and yet until that track was over I was very tense.  I’m sure that a visceral reaction was what he was looking for, but I’m not sure that the particulars were what he wanted from me.

My memory of September 11, 2001 is still vivid.  I awoke, as usual to the radio.  The NPR reporter was talking about mysterious smoke billowing from the World Trade Center.  I was bemused by this because the reporters kept talking about it for sometime, yet they didn’t seem to know what it was.  I even recall there was some talk of an air-conditioning malfunction.  Soon, they declared that a plane had crashed into the tower.  They didn’t know anything more about it, but they suggested that it was a small craft that had drifted off course.  This seemed worthy of watching, so I got up and turned on the TV.  I watched as they showed the smoke billowing from the building and talked about what had happened.  And then I saw the plane pass behind the first tower and smash into the second tower.  And I was confused because no one said anything about it for what seemed like minutes, and then finally the announcer choked and reported that it was a second plane, and then panic bled into my system.

Later in the day after the towers fell, I drove to the tallest hill in my town from where I used to enjoy the New York City skyline, and I watched the smoke pluming across the horizon.

While I know my story is mild by most accounts, the fact that I saw the second tower hit as it happened (even if it was on TV) was a pretty powerful moment.  And, while I watched all the footage of that day for quite some time after the event, I’m no longer prepared to see anymore.  The memory is mine and I don’t want it hijacked.

These two memories seem to bookend my experience as an American…from the glorious highs of the Olympics to the unbelievable lows of September 11^th.  In my memory’s storyline, the U.S.A. went from underdogs who could beat the global behemoth to the global behemoth itself, being attacked by the underdog.  And in that time, it seems like that movement from David to Goliath was almost invisible.  Sure, there was always talk about the U.S. being the only superpower, and yet as with many things you constantly hear, it had lost meaning.  All that chanting of “We’re Number One” became more than just sloganeering by the Olympic fans.  It slowly crept across globe, making us the ones to beat.

In that time, the Olympics turned from a venue for amateurs into a venue for professionals.  Dream Teams popped up in various sports and something was lost.  When I was told that other countries fielded professionals as well, it seemed beside the point…that wasn’t what America did.  Look at the 1980 hockey team!  Our amateurs beat the professionals.  We don’t need to use professional sports players!

But then we did.  And I don’t know that anyone gets quite as invested in the Olympic Dream Team sports anymore.  Which is why amateurs like Misty Mae Trainer and Michael Phelps are the Olympians that really capture the Olympic Spirit.  And frankly, I was delighted that in the 2004 Olympics, the Dream Team lost to Lithuania, a bunch of kids who had no business beating NBA stars, and yet they did.  That would be their miracle.

As I drove home from work that day, I imagined what I could have said to the instructor and to my colleagues.  I could have stood up and said “This meeting is supposed to be about expressing your feelings so that the team communicates better.   Well, my feeling is this.  The memory of this Olympic victory is very special to me.  I cherish it as a memory that I can be proud of.  And I do not want it to be compromised by someone else’s vision of it.  And I especially do not want my memory compromised for some lame team-building exercise.”

But instead, I simply grabbed my notebook and drew hockey pucks over and over, not looking up at the screen, while Kurt Russell’s voice flowed over me.