On to the Never-Ending Future

I wasn't able to post comments on the last couple days of the Olympics due to a computer malfunction, and now that I'm back in business, I find that I'm just as glad that the Games are over and I can get back to normal.  But there is one thing I saw that I cannot let go unremarked.

At the Olympic stadium for track events, there were teams of what I presumed were volunteers whose job it was to provide each entrant in a race with a plastic bin for his or her personal items.  The volunteer set the box down in the runner's lane, well behind the starting line, and the athletes would drop their warm-up clothes into it along with whatever other things they had with them that they would not carry or wear during the running of the race.

As far as I could tell, none of the runners paid the least bit of attention to these keepers of the plastic boxes who stood tranquil and solemn over the bins taking their custodial duties very seriously.  When the athletes were introduced and about to take their marks and get set and go, the volunteers would pick up the plastic baskets and march off the track with them.

Before the start of the men's 200-meter dash, the cameras caught Usain Bolt as he took off his warm-up pants and jacket.  The keeper of his plastic bin was a young man who looked to be about 20 years old and who was dutifully standing quiet and vigilant over the plastic bin, possibly ruminating on his great good luck in having been assigned to the famous sprinter.  After tossing his clothes into the basket, Bolt held his fist out toward the young man, who hesitated just a moment, then reached out and bumped Bolt's fist with his own, grinning from ear to ear.  Bolt turned away then, but the volunteer remained in the camera shot for a few more seconds.  Twice his smile faded as he tried to regain his serious Official-Olympic-Runner's-Plastic-Bin-Protector attitude, and twice his face broke into a huge grin.

For the rest of his life, that young man is going to smile every time he thinks about his fist-bump with the legendary Jamaican champion who won that race at the London Olympics of 2012.