PARVUM
OPUS
Number
303
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Happy Thanksgiving! Here’s a special holiday feature for this week’s PO.
By Rhonda Keith
Will the long road to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver end in bed for synchronized spooners all over North America, where ambitious innovators have been refining the sport ~ or event, if you will ~ for more than a decade?
Cozy, homey, unglamorous spooning has been developed into a competitive art, more like synchronized swimming than anything else. The bare bones of spooning is this: two people lying back to front execute increasingly intricate turns and rolls in perfect unison ~ without dislodging the blanket.
Spooning, that ancient, familiar, domestic ritual, evolved into an artistic sport in the cold climate of Canada and the northern border states of the United States. So far, no top spooning teams have appeared further south. In earlier days, lack of air conditioning and the resulting sweaty bodies might have given hot-climate competitors an advantage, but now the sweat factor is lost, while air conditioning isn’t cold enough.
“You really need to hear that cold north wind whistling through the cracks in the windows to get the motivation and the feeling you need to compete,” says Olympic hopeful Ned Ferguson of Saskatoon. “You don’t want that blanket sliding off the bed and you don’t want your mate to pull it off, either. In a sense, your partner is also your competitor, until you develop your technique together.”
Which is why today the best competitive teams are long-married couples.
Ned’s wife, Sheila Urquhart-Ferguson, explains: “It seems like couples we know who aren’t married don’t try competitive spooning. I guess it’s because they’re afraid if they mess up, it’s too easy to break up the act, so to speak. Ned and I have been spooning for 15 years altogether and 10 years competitively. We were among the first.”
The rules of the synchronized spooning event are simple. Two people enter the bed or bed-like platform; they start out lying side by side, face up, then, by tradition, first turn so the man faces the woman’s back, when they proceed to execute a series of deft turns and rolls under a light-weight, transparent “blanket” weighted at the edges to simulate blanket weight. Competition blankets must be transparent, obviously, so judges can see the movements. Platform entry is as important as a good dismount.
During the course of the performance, competitors must accomplish two 360-degree turns, clockwise and counterclockwise, without becoming uncovered by the blanket at any point or letting the blanket slip off the bed. Points are gained for speed, smoothness, and style, plus total synchronization. Points are lost for uncontrolled flailing and showing too much “air,” that is, space between the couple when they’re in nested spoon position. Air may legally be created in the opening and closing movements when the couple may form a face-to-face heart shape or a back-to-back X configuration. Arm placement, with parallel positioning, is important.
Timing rules are still not set in concrete. A full double-360 performance can be completed during the length of whatever piece of music the competitors choose, usually a popular song two to three minutes long. Tempos vary. Some competitors choose longer classical pieces or moody psychedelic instrumentals, but if execution appears to be too slow, or edging toward sexy, general consensus has it that the traditional heart of spooning disappears (i.e., keeping warm while not breathing into each other’s face), and further, that it’s no longer appropriate for Olympic audiences.
A competitor who dozes off during a performance doesn’t necessarily lose points, if his or her partner can keep the routine going smoothly. If the judges can’t tell who’s really asleep, who’s to say it’s not part of the routine? And as Mark Twain said of a brilliant riverboat steam captain who piloted his sidewheeler while asleep, imagine what he could do if he were dead!
Bed: The bed can be a real mattress ~ extra firm is preferred ~ though spooners have been experimenting with padded wood platforms, futons, and even waterbeds. Some competitors work on a bare floor, but this is not permitted in competition because a smooth, slippery surface gives an unequal advantage. Spooners have even experimented with trampolines in exhibition spooning.
Bedding: Thin, sheer silk is preferred for the blanket, which must be weighted all around the edges. At first, spooners tried attaching weights just to the corners but that less authentic weight distribution is harder to control and was discarded early on. Sheer sleeping bags, two singles or a double, have far only been used in campers’ amateur trials. Preferred sheet fabrics are high-thread-count cotton, linen, or silk. Polyester blends can add a bit of unwanted and distracting static electricity, subtle but perceptible to the experienced spooner. Even flannel has been used by one pair of daring exhibition spooners!
Costumes: Spooners, like ice skaters, add flair to their athletic performance with beautiful stylized pajamas, but function and form are equal partners. Of course, slippery materials such as satin with spandex are preferred, while too much glitter adds friction, but spectacular effects can be created without piling on the sequins and rhinestones. Spooners are using tiny LED lights in their costumes to add flash that doesn’t slow them down or snag, and feathers can be found embellishing Pa in his nightcap and Ma in her bedsocks. Velvet and silky fake fur are occasionally seen in hibernation-themed performances. Nightgowns were abandoned early on in favor of pajamas for the ladies, because nightgowns and even loose pajama legs tend to twist and bunch up, but graceful effects are created with flowing ruffles on pajamas. Shorty pajamas for women and wife-beaters for men in hot colors are popular in summer events. Glow-in-the dark costumes are crowd-pleasers in a dimly lit arena, but judges in official competitions require bright lights.
“Nudge” and “Swish” Carhardt from Grygla, Minnesota, pushed the boundaries of function by wearing traditional flannel pajamas ~ on flannel sheets! ~ and turned in (no pun intended!) a respectable fourth-place performance in the 1999 “Spoon Like It’s 1999” Semi-Pro Competition and Amateur Tryouts in Manitoba, despite a very slow time, and a double fault when the Carhardts got stuck and almost couldn’t come out of a face-down position into a 180 roll back to starting position. Now flannel is used only in exhibition spooning, not competitions.
In the course of developing rules and practices for this new competition, issues continue to arise that can’t be predicted by studying other sports.
Ned and Sheila Urquhart-Ferguson have had to work through the toenail issue.
“The judges didn’t care,” she said, “because they can’t see your toenails from that distance anyway, and I always have a nice fresh pedicure. But Ned used to think if my toenails were too long, it ruined the feeling of smoothness for him, whereas I thought you could use longer toenails as an extra signaling tool for your partner, like when dancers give their partners little pushes, you know. We take dancing lessons, too. I think it helps. So now Ned has long toenails too. That’s why I don’t like to wear fancy bed socks with our costumes.”
There have been some objections to the mixed-couples only (man and woman) convention, and same-sex couples do compete in local venues. However, they are not as popular with the majority of family audiences, and since all couples in Olympic figure skating are man-woman, even if some of the men are gay, mixed-couple spooning hasn’t brought out violent protests.
“To tell you the truth,” said gay spooner Jem Whittle of Ontario, “I myself like the whole yin-yang man-woman look. It works aesthetically. And it reminds me of my mom and dad fighting over the blankets, which frankly, totally went over Freud’s head.”
His spooning partner Shirley Purley concurs. “Spooning is primal and that’s the feeling I want to bring out in our choreography. I’m working on spooning in a circle around a wood fire, which is really hard because not only do you have the 360 rotation from the head down, but you add a 360-degree revolution around the fire. It’s hard to get fire marshal permission too.”
A few couples whose dogs and cats sleep with them have conceded that the animals don’t work in competition, especially cats, but can add a light touch in exhibition spooning.
And don’t look for competitive underwater spooning. Like gimmicky underwater marriage ceremonies, a few people try it, but to the viewing public, underwater spooning says “drowning.”
But how about spooning on ice? Those tough Canucks do it just for fun. It could become part of regular competition, but acceptable costuming is still being debated by practitioners. In the Yukon, some spooners compete wearing heavy fur-lined skins modeled after bulky Eskimo or Inuit clothing. Their ice routines make up in excitement what they lack in finesse, since they’re often conducted on thin ice in the spring.
“We’re luckier than most athletes,” Nudge Carhardt explained, “because we get to practice eight hours every night without having to leave the house! So when we practice on our competition platform in costume during the day, that’s just extra!”
His wife Swish continued, “We come across stuff that wouldn’t happen in controlled practices. Like when I got a nose whistle the other night. I thought Nudge was asleep but he heard it, and actually I had two, in both sides of my nose. ‘Cause of the dry furnace air, you know. So we used it, it was like a metronome, we executed our turns to the rhythm. Of course it’s something a judge could never hear, but you’ve got to be able to adapt to the unexpected. Could be worse, could be a charlie horse.”
“I got a charlie horse once during a competition,” Nudge added. “But no one noticed. I just worked with it, or more like against it. We did OK that time too, ‘cause I kicked out and Swish just felt me, she kicked out simultaneously, and kept her foot and leg parallel to mine, so it turned out to our advantage. It looked good. Looked strong. Like when you have a nightmare, but stronger than a twitch.”
These top-ranked spooners are ready for the Olympics, but is the Olympics ready for them, when older, more familiar competitive sports have yet to be accepted? The spooners think time is on their side ~ both sides, as well as their backs and fronts.
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