Sittin'

I'm sitting here on the Group W bench...no, wait, thats something else entirely. I'm sitting here listening to the Tommy Emmanuel CD that I got a bit ago, and enjoying it greatly. Right now, it's 'Blackbird', played with a whimsical, tentative air. I think there's only one piece on the CD that I actively don't like -- sort of his equivalent of what the local symphony's conductor was referring to when he said 'And now, the words that strike fear into an audience's heart -- an original piece by....' This is his original piece, and its a small price to pay. Do wish I could auto-skip it, though. I remember when CDs were first becoming popular, and one article mentioned that you could 'code' the CD to skip pieces, play in different order than whats on the CD, repeat pieces, and so forth. Never have seen that. Perhaps it was hyperbole.

Speaking of hyperbole: the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth, to which I've alluded earlier. My wife and I talked about it a little this morning, while the offspring was downstairs improving herself by absorbing the best of Saturday morning television. My feeling is that I want her to take the tests (turns out the second is an actual test, not some flimflam they made up) knowing that they will be hard, and that while she is bright and may do well, she may also have trouble with some of it -- and thats okay. I don't want her to be afraid of it (as I am apparently afraid of it). I do NOT want her to become in any way a 'brain' or a 'grind' --excuse me, Instructor, but I believe that what you're referring to actually occurred in the latter years of the Pelopennesian Wars, and not, as you suggested, in the Great Mudville Riots of Ought Two. I don't think she will, but I really don't want that, anyway. Yet at the same time I want her to know that she is smart, and that she can stretch and reach and get things that might seem beyond her. I've told her that I did not do well in high school (thats putting it kindly; I did abysmally poorly), mostly because I did not realize that being smart did not mean that I would not have to work for things. Instead, I assumed that if I was smart -- and I knew that I was -- then that simply meant that I would 'get' things at a higher level, but if it didn't come to me right off the bat, then I could never get it. I didn't realize that almost everyone has to work, and I surely did not realize the thrill and delight of achieving something I'd thought impossible. I want her to have that -- to be a smart kid; one thats smart, and one thats a kid.

So we'll do it... warily.