Ang isang maliit na higit sa tatlong taon na ang nakalipas, aking asawa at ako naka-sign ang aking anak na lalaki up para sa isang aktibidad ng tag-init, The Midland Park Players. This is a drama group that spends about three or four weeks preparing for a play and then showing it to the parents, friends and relatives. It’s always been done very well.

Hindi ko alam kung ang bata sa lahat ng tao ay ganito, but my son is extremely reluctant to try new things. Knowing this, we signed him up for the program. We’ve found that it’s best to alert him to these kinds of things early and often. Kaya, upang mapaglabanan ang kanyang natural na pag-aatubili, namin sinabi sa kanya ng maaga at ginawa ang aming pinakamahusay na upang gawin itong tunog tulad ng masaya, at iba pa. Even with a multi-month advertising campaign, he still wasn’t convinced. We forced him to do, kahit na, at bilang ay madalas na ang kaso, he had a great time.

Sa pamamagitan ng mga oras ng ikalawang taon na pinagsama sa paligid, he had once again convinced himself that he didn’t want to participate. Pero, kami ay naka-sign up sa kanya at sa zero-araw, I dropped him off one morning at the high school where they practice. When I went to pick him up after lunch, siya ay napaka nasasabik, lahat ng mga smiles at inihayag, "The play is the Velveteen Kuneho and I want to be the Rabbit". He had spent literally months carrying on (minsan hysterically) tungkol sa kung paano hindi niya nais na magkaroon ng kahit ano ang gagawin sa Player Park at pagkatapos ng unang araw, he wants to be the lead role in the play. We’ve seen this pattern before.

(Karamihan sa aming mga sorpresa, ginawa niya makuha ang Kuneho papel at siya ay kagulat-gulat.)

Fast forward a few years. He’s been in Park Players three times now, so he’s something of a veteran. This summer (2008), Players starts up again. Sa Pansamantala, sa wakas siya ay naniwala sa amin siya talaga doesn’t want to play soccer and he never liked basketball. That left him with no extra-curricular activities for late Winter / early Spring. A client with whom I was working mentioned that his daughter was in a program called Stage Right. Stage right is a slightly more expensive version of Park Players and it’s not in my town, but adjacent to it. Perfect.

The thing to know about that town is that it’s practically another country in terms of wealth. It has a high-frequency train right to Wall Street and NYC in general. It’s just a wealthy place. One of the on-going family discussion themes is whether we should have moved to that town instead of where we live now. It’s a bigger town, nitong mga paaralan nag-aalok ng higit pang mga programa para sa mga bata, at iba pa. My wife grew up in that town and her parents live there, so we are "hooked in" despite not living there. I personally grew up in different circumstances in Massachusetts, so I don’t have a lot to say about this during family dinner conversation. This isn’t to say that we aren’t very happy where we live. We just know that that town is a level above our town economically.

Stage Right’s next program started too soon for us to launch our normal advertising campaign to overcome my son’s reluctance. This is when he came up with one my personal favorite arguments against doing something: "Friday nights are magbigay-alam gabi para sa pagtulog overs!" Stage Right was going to interfere with his weekend socials.

Ang araw ay, dalhin namin siya doon at i-drop off sa kanya at katulad ng lahat ng iba pa, kanyang natural na pag-ibig ng pagiging lamang buhay kinuha sa ibabaw at siya ay pagkakaroon ng isang magandang panahon na may ito.

Ito nakaraang weekend ang aking asawa ay pakikipag-usap sa kanya at para sa unang pagkakataon, I think he’s tailoring his discussions very precisely for his audience. She had asked him how Stage Right compares to Midland Park Players. He tells her that "In Park Players, we have teenagers that help us out. There aren’t any in in Stage Right. In Park Players, teenagers make all props. In Stage Right, we have to bring our own props. We have to do everything. And then he twists the knife: "I thought this was supposed to be a rich town."

Lahat ng mga taon, I never really thought that he was hearing or understanding anything as it related to the "rich town". Gayunman, ito lumiliko out siya ay.

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