Blogs

By Dean Norman

When a new sport is added to the Olympics, more kids can aspire to win medals, and the TV audience grows. I would like to suggest a new sport, and name it after my Dad. The Raymond Earl Norman Standing High Jump. Dad only performed this stunt once, but it got a great response from the audience.

I need to describe the situation that led to the performance so you can fully appreciate how good it was. A paper wasp decided to build a nest in our mailbox. We didn’t know she was building a nest at first. Mom saw a wasp fly out of the mailbox when she took out the mail. She said, “Ooo!” as she grabbed the mail and quickly shut the front door.

About every other day the wasp was hanging around when Mom got the mail, so she started asking us kids to get the mail. The mailman began to notice that there was a wasp going in or out of our mailbox when he delivered our mail. Well, after the mama wasp hatched a few kids to help her build the nest, the mailman said he would no longer put our mail in the box. It was time to tell Dad to do something about it.

This was in the 1930s when mail was almost all personal letters, and you didn’t get your small mailbox overstuffed every day with junk mail. Many days we got no mail. That is how the situation developed gradually over a period of a week or two. So by the time Dad was told to do something about it, there was a very strong army of warrior wasps guarding their nest.

I think Dad deliberately waited until I was away playing with friends so I wouldn’t be around to become a target for the wasps. A Flit can of insect poison would not be a lethal enough weapon for the wasp army. Dad soaked a rag in gasoline, hung it on the end of a stick, lit the torch, and crept up the steps of our front porch. He stuffed the flaming rag into the mailbox, and made his retreat.

My friend Johnny Wall happened to be walking by our house. “Your Dad jumped flat footed right over the high hedge beside the porch, landed in the driveway, and then ran around your house, and I heard the back door slam. I thought the flames in the mailbox might set your house on fire, but it didn’t. There was a cloud of wasps coming out of the mailbox. I was on the sidewalk, far enough away so they didn’t see me, or didn’t think I had stuffed the torch into their nest. It was the funniest thing I ever saw.

I didn’t think anyone could jump that high, but your dad did it. And he ran faster than I ever saw a grownup run.”

I was really sorry that I wasn’t there to see it. I wish Dad had told me when he was going to torch the wasps, and I would have stayed far enough away to not get stung.

But I guess good parents never trust their little kids to really stay far enough away from something like that.

Now that I think about it, maybe the Standing High Jump with the flaming torch and wasp nest is too complicated to be performed by lot of athletes in one venue. So why not make it the climax of the opening Olympic ceremony when they light the official torch? Have the lucky athlete who gets to make the final run with the torch set fire to a big paper wasp nest on a pedestal, then jump flat footed over a hedge, and sprint to safety into a shelter with a screen door that makes a big slam. I’ll bet that would get the biggest in-person and TV audience of the Olympics.

—Dean Norman

Dean Norman is a cartoonist and humor writer, whose work has appeared in greeting cards,The New Yorker, MAD Magazine, The Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine and The Kansas City Star. He's also written comedy for cartoon shows and written and illustrated children's books. He illustrated a cartoon book for Cleveland Metroparks, Cleveland Metroparks Adventures.