When I was just a little boy. I asked my mother, "What will I be?"

Sam wants to be an Olympic athlete. That sentence doesn't do his enthusiasm about his new life goal justice at all. He is REALLY into the Olympics. When Kamryn was small I used to show her stuff on TV - figure skating, dance, gymnastics, people singing etc. in the hope of awakening some inner desire and hidden talent of hers. Those stories people tell of their grown uber-successful children... Oh she saw x on TV when she was small and begged for lessons in Y and now look how successful she is. Kamryn? Not all that interested or enthusiastic about anything I showed her. After a while I accepted the reality that was my life and my child and we stopped this ridiculousness (I admit it was ridiculous but can't a Mom dream?).

Sam though - he's enthusiastic about everything. He bubbles over in pure enthusiasm. There is no halfway. He's easy to motivate; he's certain he can do ANYTHING (aside from getting two happy faces from school; that he equates with the impossible). He would have encouraged my deluded parental brain had I tried the Kamryn-tactic with him but alas I gave that up. On Tuesday I watched Olympic snowcross after work. Kamryn was doing homework; Sam was buzzing about when Canada won a medal. You would have thought Sam knew the winner personally. he kept bouncing off the couch and running to the TV to point the medal winner out to me, her fans, and her parents. The broadcasters were kind enough to keep changing the scene and he had to describe everyone anew each and every time the scene changed. He was so excited. It was very cute.

He was filled with questions and ideas. "I want to learn to do that. When can I try that? Can 5-year-olds be in the Limpics? Would we come to see him in the Limpics?" Poor child. I didn't have the heart to tell him he was never going to be in the Limpics. While he has some incredible athletic talents; he has the wrong parents.

We'll drive him to practices. We'll sign him up for sports. We'll pay for equipment. We'll stand in the rain, snow and sleet and cheer mightily. But we won't push him when he may need pushing. We won't encourage him to abandon one sport to focus all his energies on another. We won't mine his college fund to pay for power skating, and winter soccer conditioning, and summers at sports camps. We won't rearrange our family life around training and competitive team schedules. And no we won't allow him to leave home at 15 and move halfway across the country to play in the junior leagues. Just not our lifestyle choice. To be honest, I don't understand how it can be anyone's lifestyle choice. Right now my big fear is that at seven he will be selected to play Novice A hockey (he's playing at the "A level" in the initiation program he's in now) because I'm pretty certain that the parents of the other A-level players will annoy me too much (I'm way to laissez-faire as a hockey parent).

We love him dearly and want him to reach his full potential but just can't imagine living that way. And I don't understand the people that do (We have close friends that did that; their son was an okay hockey player who made it into Junior A hockey and never any farther. In the end he had nothing.) I guess we're content to be ordinary because we truly believe we are. I'm just not a chance taker. When I look at the odds (and they are pretty abysmal) about making it in any sport (even just as far as a middling sports scholarship) opting to be ordinary just seems to be the logical choice. So he's probably not going to the Limpics. He's probably going to be a good high school athlete who earns some extra money on the side coaching little kids on weekends and during the summer. Then again I also swore up and down not three years ago that my kids would never play hockey.

So maybe... I wonder where the Olympics will be in 2022?

...Que sera, sera...