What will they become?

When we experience the miracle of birth, we gaze upon this new little being and wonder whether he/she will someday be the President of the United States or maybe an Olympic star.

By the time our babies are a year old, we are pretty darn sure they will be famous. Maybe he can throw his little plastic keys further than all the rest of the babies, so the dads are all thinking they have a baseball star on their hands. They are already dreaming of million-dollar contracts.

Yes, we all think our children have unbelievable talent.

When my son reached T-ball age, we were sure he would knock the socks off the other players.  He once hit a great one and he was rounding the bases. When he got to third base, the coach yelled, “RUN HOME! RUN HOME!” My son obviously didn’t want to do what the coach wanted. He stayed on the base. The coach yelled again, “RUN HOME!” My son hung his head and ran to the dugout. He thought that was “home”. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t going to be a major league player after all.

When he was two years old and banged on the piano, we saw it as a sign of extraordinary talent.  When he was four, he picked up a guitar and strummed a few times and we started looking for a special teacher who would have the insight and wisdom to teach a prodigy.

After the purchase of a new small guitar and six months of lessons, we anticipated the recital with excitement. Our son appeared on the stage. He positioned his fingers and strummed once. Several minutes later he had finally repositioned his fingers and strummed again. He did this several more times, and finally looked up proudly. The song was over. We were crushed. It seems we didn’t have a prodigy at all.

We have gone through several more kids now and lots of lessons and sports. Dance, saxophone, football, Space Camp, tennis, clarinet, basketball, volleyball, oboe, gymnastics, ice hockey.  Still, no stars or Presidents.

But we do have a bunch of really great kids who know how to do a LOT of things and have fun doing them.