In truth, I’m a proud papa pretty much all the time, but last week was particularly endearing and noteworthy. My son, Keiran (on the left) and his friend Luke performed Ozzy’s Crazy Train for their 5th grade talent show.
He’s been dragging me to see the annual talent show for the previous 3 years. And we’ve been building his expectations and confidence with weekly guitar lessons for much of the past 2 years.
It was no small battle to get to this point though. Video games make most accomplishments too easy to acquire. Mastering a few buttons and the wave of a remote takes little effort compared to mastering strings and frets, notes and chords. I’m not anti video games by any means. But is it too much to ask to limit screen time to a couple hours each day and make time for 20 minutes of practice and some outdoor play?
From today’s point of view, the best part of the whole deal was being able to remind him while driving home after the show, that the moment of success, the applause from over 100 peers and their parents, the feeling that they nailed it… the afterglow …could only happen because he stuck with the lessons and made time to practice.
In another few years I’ll ask him what video games he was playing during the spring of his 5th grade year. Then I’ll ask him about the talent show.
Knowing him he’ll shake his head, roll his eyes and say, “yeah dad, I get it.”