I was reading an article in The Guardian commenting on moves to modernise the Modern Pentathlon for the Olympic Games. It’s an anachronistic event designed to celebrate the ‘romantic rough adventure’ of a cavalry officer trying to deliver a message behind enemy lines. The five elements of the event are pistol shooting, swimming, fencing, horse riding and cross country running. These might have appealed to impressionable young men in the early 1900s but seem a bit out of touch with modern sensibilities.
The newspaper asked readers for their suggestions for alternative events. Some ideas were mundane: replace horses with mountain bikes, add rowing, and so on, but other were more radical - hand-to-hand combat, Mixed Martial Arts, etc.
I liked the suggestions from the nerds who thought that drone flying might add a bit of lustre but the idea I related best to was the one from the long-suffering older gentleman struggling to deal with the demands of a technological society:
1. Finding the remote control
2. Working out which one actually turns the TV on
3. Plugging a USB cable in the right way
4. Finding your way around a room without turning the Big Light on
5. Finding the paper jam in the printer
It’s a bugger getting old but it helps if you can laugh about it.
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