At the tender age of 8 you don't realize how the hard work and effort you put in now will stick with you as you grow up. My parents were adamant about making me participate. I learned piano, French, took ballet, tap, was a member of 4H club, Explorers and was signed up for at least one season of every summer sport available to a young person in my small community. But my limited attention span caught up to me and I floated between lessons picking them up and putting them down, not really retaining all the details that make a person talented at those things. So, now instead of being great at a few things, I am kinda good at a lot of things.
There are times I wish my Momma had forced me to continue on with piano practice. Though really how can you force anyone to do anything- especially a tenacious 8 year who just wants to go outside and play? I wish I'd gone on a foreign exchange to France where I could practice my foreign tongue. I wish I'd trained my 4H calf to do tricks. Throughout my childhood my thoughts were always of what I was missing in the immediate moment, not what I would miss later. To an 8 year old; now is all there is.
Now, as a 30 year old I regret not sticking to my childhood skill sets. Being great at something during childhood is a wonderful way to start out as an adult. There are days when I long to speak French while sipping cafe au lait and eating a baguette. Or when I see a gleaming grand piano taunting me to tickle the ivories. Or identifying a type of cheese by the smell alone. Then there's the urge-however fleeting- to be more athletic and drop into a pickup game of something at my local playground. But my skills were never that well honed. And any residual muscle memory has long since atrophied.
The great thing about my childhood was the variation in the skill sets I learned and what I have retained. I can read music, which means I can easily go back and start playing piano again. Beginning with Baa baa black sheep, twinkle, twinkle & Hot cross buns of course. I can understand French when I listen to someone speak it; though I no longer think in French, I could polish off those rusty pipes pretty fast. I guess the great thing about the variation in my childhood experiences is that it taught me how to act. Or at least how to pretend to do almost everything, relatively well, which is the hardest part about acting:)
There are times I wish my Momma had forced me to continue on with piano practice. Though really how can you force anyone to do anything- especially a tenacious 8 year who just wants to go outside and play? I wish I'd gone on a foreign exchange to France where I could practice my foreign tongue. I wish I'd trained my 4H calf to do tricks. Throughout my childhood my thoughts were always of what I was missing in the immediate moment, not what I would miss later. To an 8 year old; now is all there is.
Now, as a 30 year old I regret not sticking to my childhood skill sets. Being great at something during childhood is a wonderful way to start out as an adult. There are days when I long to speak French while sipping cafe au lait and eating a baguette. Or when I see a gleaming grand piano taunting me to tickle the ivories. Or identifying a type of cheese by the smell alone. Then there's the urge-however fleeting- to be more athletic and drop into a pickup game of something at my local playground. But my skills were never that well honed. And any residual muscle memory has long since atrophied.
The great thing about my childhood was the variation in the skill sets I learned and what I have retained. I can read music, which means I can easily go back and start playing piano again. Beginning with Baa baa black sheep, twinkle, twinkle & Hot cross buns of course. I can understand French when I listen to someone speak it; though I no longer think in French, I could polish off those rusty pipes pretty fast. I guess the great thing about the variation in my childhood experiences is that it taught me how to act. Or at least how to pretend to do almost everything, relatively well, which is the hardest part about acting:)
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