I have tons and tons of baby goldfish in my pond. Too many. Gave a couple to my nephew. But it was just a piddly one gallon bowl without a filter. I told him that honestly they probably wouldn't survive for long in it. And I told him I'd buy him a much larger aquarium if he successfully learned how to play fur elise.

The idea just being to get him thinking about just trying to achieve things in his life. It's not that he needs to be good at music, just that he should just try to start doing something with himself. Get in the habit of trying to achieve things. And learn what it's like to get something as the result of hardwork.

A month has passed and he hasn't done anything. Those fish sit there slowly dying. Perhaps he's ashamed about it. Perhaps he'll slowly learn to dislike me for making him feel ashamed.

He's only eight though. But perhaps he's a bit like his mother, who goes to the emergency room once or twice a month for migraines, yet won't even give up caffeine despite knowing it cured her brother's headaches.

Here I am, at 38, and the obstacles one encounters in writing have still successfully stopped me cold. And he's only 8. So it may be too much, although certainly many children could manage it. It is that I'm trying to help him be a better person than I've been. But I forget just how much else he's dealing with at that age. There's a lot that comes ahead of learning to play the piano. Also they have him playing soccer and swimming and he seems to lay around exhausted a lot of the time. Oh well.