09.09.07
Your parents are out of their minds
On my way into the office today, I was listening to some NPR, and there was a story on how Asian Americans are starting to send their children to swimming instruction in droves. There are a bunch of swimming teachers in the US now who were once Olympic swimmers in China. The reporters played it up like swimming is some new Asian past-time, but I remember, growing up here in a Plano, how my parents (and those of other fellow Asians) would line up at 5-in-the-morning at the rec. centers across the city to sign us up for swimming lessons. I mean, every summer, I’d be in a swimming group that was at least 75% Asian! I think that when I was a kid, the Asian youth ‘blueprint’ called for piano lessons, swimming instruction, and art classes. Every Asian kid I knew went to each of those things at least once.
Anyway, back to the swimming thing. The report mentioned how these ‘new’ Chinese instructors are more disciplined than other swimming coaches, and I got the impression that the parents of the children who are sent there are those ultra-competitive types who are looking for teachers who can turn their kids into swimming machines. Don’t you feel like it’s a little cheapened when these kids win every medal at school events or when they break decade-old records for 9 year old swimmers? They beat a bunch of kids who are just there to have some fun, sometimes winning every possible medal!
It’s sad to me that these kids will never achieve this kind of success again — not in swimming anyway. They’re going to reach the climax two measures into the song. Once they reach puberty, they’ll be surpassed by other non-Asians who develop bigger physiques. If they still love swimming, they’ll find that their parents don’t care about it that much anymore. By then, their parents will start pushing them into SAT classes (another stage of the Asian youth blueprint).
So many of my friends developed a love for sports, art, or music because their parents pushed them into those things pretty hardcore-ly when they were kids, and it’s disheartening how things turned out. JACKSON POLLOCK, for example, became serious about the violin because of his parents, but of course they never really wanted him to become a violinist. He upset them when he stopped working so hard at school and decided to pursue a career as a musician. Well, I want to ask them why they pushed him into it if they never considered it a valid life-choice. WASSILY KANDINSKY’s parents always encouraged his art… until he decided that he wanted to be an artist (at which point they wanted him to look into math). These two examples aren’t even the most potent ones! You hear how countless kids go into top-tier schools and major in things like medicine and law, only to decide that careers in those fields were never really something they wanted.
If I ever have children, I’ll teach them to swim myself. It wouldn’t be about laying a beat-down on other hapless kids in meaningless contests. It’d be so that they’ll be able to go to Hawaii when they’re older and enjoy the ocean.
*The names of my acquaintances have been replaced with those of ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST painters.