We think our children are superstars. We honestly believe they are phenoms sometimes, and then we get together with friends at a barbecue where we’ve all had too many Michelob Ultra’s, and we actually claim our kids could be prodigies. Newsflash. Ninety-nine percent of them aren’t.
In high school, or more frequently during that awkward first year of college, our little darlings go to real auditions for elaborate undergraduate productions, or downtown coffee houses that provide no more than a stool, a mic, and a stationary spot with no color gels, or comedy clubs that can flash the lights on and off if you suck, or dive bars with clientele who will boo you faster than a football fan giving Santa Claus a Philadelphia welcome. All those wonderful living room performances for Mommy’s scrap-booking club, Daddy’s golf buddies, and the Cleveland cousins with Aunt Ida and Grandma Fanny have to be re-evaluated, along with the bi annual elementary and middle school choir extravaganzas where our star in the making (oh myGawd, isn’t she just precious?) sings with incredible gusto, dances with spectacular passion and chutzpah, yet soon becomes the high school understudy and campus non-factor when talent starts counting more than bravado.