Occasionally it’s my job as a responsible, loving parent to crush a kid’s dream.  My oldest daughter is very smart and artistic.  She loves gymnastics, but she’s very smart and artistic.  Twice a week for over a year my wife and I took an hour of our time and $30 to let her practice to become a future olympian.  It’s important to know that most female olympic gymnasts are between 13 and 16 years old.  This means we only have 7 to 10 years to teach her you can’t do a forward roll when you’re two feet from the television.  I’m not sure the timing is going to work out in her favor.

As an adult I feel it’s necessary to do the right thing, and also to save $3k a year.  The kid on the other hand insists she has mastered the basics and just needs more time.  My observations have found that the basics of child gymnastics are looking cute in a leotard and understanding trampoline face plants don’t hurt.  I’d feel better about paying for her to continue if she’d spend half the time knocking kids over and pissing in the foam pit.  At least we’d have something to laugh about on the ride home.

The key to proper childhood dream crushing is the spin.  I happen to be a child spin master.  My wife is not.  She proved her manipulation inability when we were trying to get the same kid to eat her vegetables.  Instead of explaining that the longer you go between plates of veggies the uglier you get, she points out that if she doesn’t eat them the doctor will cut her fucking throat and put in a feeding tube with a funnel.  Now we have to wipe piss off a stool and pick carrots out of a plate full of tears.  

For the gymnastics dream to be destroyed properly it is important that we spend equal time insulting those that continue the activity and praising participants of the replacement.  That is why tonight, as the family sits in front of our new diet of meat and bread, I will explain that the owner of the gym is a kid toucher, the other girls are pill headed whores, and her new soccer coach is best friends with Hannah Montana.