A Champion Imagined

Clearly, she had made a fatal mistake. The colored tetrapods stacked to the breaking point, and GAME OVER flashed so violently that even in her alternate reality where Tetris is an Olympic sport, she realized the gold would be impossible to win. An official would place the ribbon around her neck, from which would hang a chocolate coin. Hand placed over heart, she would hum along as her ringtone, The Office theme song, resounded throughout the stadium in her honor.

In this reality, the one where her only taste of Olympic victory will reach not her lips but her child's (if pushed hard enough for vicarious gymnastic stardom), she stumbles upon a shadow puppet not unlike a unicorn, followed by that of a dove. And as those same Tetris playing fingers flawlessly wield animal after animal against the wall, she realizes -- after sticking the most graceful dismount ever seen from a bed -- not that she had an inner heroine waiting to be discovered, but that over the next four years even this could be perfected....