
March 12, 2022
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A few days ago, my wife and I joined some friends for a gathering during a few rare hours when we weren’t busy hauling a teenager to some kind of expensive activity or hosting an entire herd of them at our home to ransack our pantry and abuse the plumbing.

As I sit here in my uneasy chair, I can hear the screams and guffaws of what sound like about 500 teenagers in my backyard swimming pool for my middle daughter’s high school graduation party, and I wonder if a sufficient supply of chlorine shock treatments exists for that water ever to recover.

According to Livestrong.com, there are nearly 5 million young people participating in gymnastics in the United States, and although only a handful ever make it to Olympic competition, their parents fork over enough cash on lessons, leotards, custom-embroidered gym bags, hair bows, grips – and other equipment my wife didn’t tell me about – to fund the entire Russian sports doping program.