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THE BASEMENT — When I hear about Olympic athletes who started training with elite coaches at the age of 3 or 4, I always wonder how the parents knew their kids had the skills to warrant such an intense program. If I had trained with the world's best skating coach starting at the age of 3, I'm sure I'd be more confident on the ice than I am now. But there's no way I'd be a top-tier skater.
Some people are born with special abilities that the rest of us simply don't have.
I've thought about this from time to time with my own children. Does one of them have the ingredients for greatness in a certain field that we just aren't yet aware? If I put my toddler in cello lessons, would I suddenly discover that he's a junior version of Yo-Yo Ma? Or if I signed my daughter up for training with the Canadian curling team, would she become a sure-fire Olympian?
This same line of thinking could even apply to our pets. Perhaps your cat is a pingpong whiz, like the one in this video.
Maybe this cat isn't a "prodigy," as the video title claims. But it still has some undeniable skill. And if the cat's owners would pony up the cash so the cat could train with a table tennis legend such as Guo Yue or Liu Guoliang, I'm sure the sky would be the limit!
I'll just keep putting my kids in Junior Jazz and hope that somehow they become the next Larry Bird.
