The Mastery Period

My parents had this game. It wasn't a fun game, or a rewarding game, or anything you could find in a store. But it worked like this:

I would try something. It didn't matter what I tried. Could be anything. Writing, I tried writing for a while. Singing, dancing. Being in a band. Art, loved me some art. A foreign language. A martial art. My parents would become aware of a new thing I was trying.

This is when the game would start- the moment they realized I was doing something other than staying as out of their way as possible, it was on.

It was a pretty simple game. They would decide for themselves how long it should take me to completely master the brand new thing I was trying. A time limit. If by the end of the time limit I had not learned the entire history of my new hobby, where the future was going with my hobby, how I would make money from the hobby, and also proved to them that I was great at said hobby, that I was absolutely, without a doubt, the best at it, I was then no longer allowed to do the hobby.

If I hadn't mastered every single aspect and proven to the them that I had this hobby mastered, then it wasn't worth doing.

Now here was the tricky part: I was never told when my time was up, or when I would be tested. Fun, right?

Writing a speech for a 4H contest required by the school? Gotta memorize the speech in a day and prove that the speech is memorized by reciting it on the spot right before bedtime. Hand over all the notes. Go.

An essay is due on a subject you just started learning about in class last week? Well, you didn't know this obscure fact that your father just so happened to know, so you obviously don't know anything about the subject at all. Better expect a low grade from your teacher. If the teacher fails you, you deserve it.

Oh, you've been in MMA class for two entire months, an hour every Wednesday and Saturday. If you can't get out of the hold I put you in when I snuck up behind you and surprised you with, you're not allowed to go back to class anymore because you're clearly not learning anything anyways, so what's the point?

Drawing? Replicate the Mona Lisa. Now. You like to sing? Nail every note in this song I just decided is the best song ever. You don't know the lyrics? Why are you even singing anything at all then?

If you can't do it perfectly, it's not worth doing at all.

And then, the real fun, they would see how long it took me to give up. A week? A month? We knew you would quit anyways, we just hurried the process along a bit. And then they would wait for the game to begin again.

Submitted June 03, 2018 at 12:53PM by heyomeatballs https://ift.tt/2sDgC4S