When I was a kid, I was the one whose siblings hated them on report card day. I was smart and couldn't help having good grades. Well, actually, I had great grades. My grades were not only the highest in the class, or even the highest in the school. I had the highest grades in the history of the school, but instead of being proud of it, I was hated by so many kids, including my siblings, my bragging rights were pissed on regularly. I began denying my grades, never mind bragging.
Instead of feeling superior to my siblings because my report cards didn't prompt my father to begin lecturing in a disappointed fashion as he did to my brother and sister, I was jealous of them for their musical ability. My brother had been on stage since he was three, singing and soon after playing the trumpet in the style of Harry James at my father's behest. Our sister at a very young age would hear a song on the radio she had never heard before and immediately sit at the piano and begin playing the tune she had just heard for the first time in her young life as though she had practiced it for a very long time.
Me, on the other hand, took piano lessons for many years and still can't play or sing as well as the toddlers my sister and brother were so many years ago. My son has now expressed an interest in singing and has a talent for it, so I am going to encourage his initiative by getting him lessons to enhance his talent. Music lessons are not the dredge they used to be with the internet that did not exist when I was a struggling would be musician.
