Trares
The disappointment was heavy in his voice.
And there was nothing I could do about it.
Disappointment isn’t a feeling Anthony has had to deal with all that often. Not to say that he gets whatever he wants; far from it. There have been countless times when we’ve said, “No” to fast food, or an impromptu toy, or a million other things. A little bit of whining, maybe some tears, but when he sees we aren’t budging, he gets over it pretty quickly.
But this felt like something different. This was really important to him.
Everything started when plans for his school’s music recital started filtering out. We received messages from Anthony’s music teacher about the planned performance — a barnyard-themed show titled, “E-I-E-I-oops!” Students could dress up as a myriad of characters: pink pigs, green mallard ducks, red roosters, yellow chicks, white sheep, brown cows and so on. Some of the students would dress like farmers in their overalls.
There were also a number of speaking parts.
Anthony has never been interested in performing in front of a crowd. Sure, he can be a ham in front of his mom and dad, but throughout his childhood, he’s told us that he’s too shy to get up in front of people and speak.
So when he mentioned he was going to try for one of the speaking pig parts, we were whole-heartedly supportive of him giving it a try. He seemed nervous, but also was excited to try something new. At school that week, Anthony told his teacher what part he was hoping to do, and we thought that was it.
It was not.
Turns out, there were so many kids who wanted to speak, they had an audition process. We should have expected that, but figured since it was an elementary school performance, they had plenty of parts to give out.
Last week, Anthony found out he didn’t make it.
When my wife picked him up from school, she could tell something was wrong. As he got into the car, he let loose how upset he was. He didn’t understand the audition process, and couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t chosen.
I got home and could see how crushed his spirit was.
Those are the moments when I can understand some of those helicopter-parent horror stories. My base instinct was to do whatever possible to lift Anthony’s spirits and rebuild his confidence. I wanted to make a stink with the music teacher, the principal, whoever I had to in order to right this perceived wrong.
But that quickly passed. It wasn’t any one person’s fault; everyone couldn’t get a speaking part, or else the show would last for hours. All those involved seemed like they handled the process with as much compassion as possible.
So my focus went to consoling Anthony. We told him how proud we were of trying for a part, and that we know how disappointed he was. But just because this didn’t work out does not mean giving up. Instead, we’ll find new opportunities and keep trying.
After some tears and some deep breathing (plus a Friday night excursion to get dinner and play video games) Anthony was better. He was ready to sing his songs for the school performance as best he could, and he’d go into it enthusiastically.
There’s going to be many, many more disappointments throughout his life — getting cut from sports teams, not getting the part in the high school play, missing out on his first-choice college, not landing the job he applied for. Dealing with those let-downs probably won’t get easier; they’ll likely only get more difficult.
But I’m proud of how Anthony has handled this one. Hopefully, it’s a chance to learn about working through feelings and coming out in a more positive space on the other side.
It sure was for me.
Ryan Trares is a senior reporter and columnist for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
