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For the record, I’m not resentful toward my parents about any of these. They were doing what any parents would: Putting their child in various circumstances to give him exposure, to nudge him out of his comfort zone, with the goal that he’d grow and perhaps embrace the challenge. It’s not their fault that each ended up being somewhat traumatic, to varying degrees. And they all happened in France.

• The ski test. Auron ski resort, 1989. I learned to ski in 1987 at age 8, and after some initial teething challenges, really took to it. I remember psyching myself up, even at that age, by reminding myself to keep an open mind and embrace the activity. My parents enrolled me in group lessons, and at the end of each series, the instructors awarded the students based on their test results. The initial steps were called “étoiles” (French for “stars”), and I handily passed the tests for both my 1st and 2nd étoiles and the conclusion of their respective series. For my 3rd étoile, part of the test involved skiing down a blue (medium difficulty) slope, slaloming between a series of poles, within a certain time limit. I felt confident, and passed all the other parts of the test with flying colors, but ended up just over the time limit for the slalom portion. I felt so ashamed, especially since my best friend Timothy had passed the test, and I lied to my parents and told them that I didn’t realize it was timed, an explanation they bought without question. But the truth was that I had failed the test outright. I’ve since come clean to them, and they laughed it off, but it wasn’t my finest moment.
• The tennis match. Tennis Club de Vence, 1993 (?). I took group lessons here for a number of months, and enjoyed it. Our instructor was an older man who seemed to like me, and helped me focus on my footwork, and encouraged me to make the follow-through on my backhand more compact, among other things. I remember the first time I served in front of the group of students, I completely whiffed, and heard very audible snickers coming from their side of the court. But the next serve I took flat and just drilled it, which silenced them from then on; that felt good. Toward the end of my time there, my parents signed up me up for a intra-club tournament. I remember feeling ambivalent about it; I wanted to do well, but wouldn’t have been crushed if I lost. My first match was held on one of the lower courts in the complex, on a typically warm (but dry), blue-skied Vence day. I don’t recall anything about my opponent, but what stands out in my memory is my dad sitting by the side of the court, head in his hands, seemingly deep in meditation or prayer or something, not even looking at me as I played the match. I think I acquitted myself fairly well, but still lost, and felt a mild sense of relief at not having to go through that again. A footnote would be to contrast my dad’s behavior in that instance with how he looked whenever we’d play each other, and he always had the biggest grin on his face on the other side of the court. I noticed that, and I loved it.
• The recital. La Gaude, 1992. This is easily the most traumatic of the three. I played accordion for a few years in my late tweens. When my mom began homeschooling my brothers and I, she asked me what instrument I wanted to play, and I said “The accordion,” earnestly, because I liked the way it sounded. Amazingly in that pre-internet age, she managed to track down a local ex-hippie who gave lessons, and I learned the basics from him before we moved to France, where, because of the relative popularity of the instrument, resources were more plentiful. My French instructor was more demanding, but he was friendly, and grounded me more in the fundamentals of the instrument than my previous instructor, who flew a bit more by the seat of his pants. After a few months, it was time for a studio-wide recital, something by which I remember being a little blindsided. I selected my favorite song to play, even though it was somewhat challenging, and I couldn’t make it consistently all the way through without flubbing a note or two. The day of the recital came, and I was a nervous wreck, absolutely terrified, but I watched myself stagger to the front of the room and begin. And…I choked. I had to restart the song several times, stumbled my way to the end and was met with a warm, generous round of applause from all the parents for actually finishing the song. I somehow made it out of the auditorium and, for all intents and purposes had a nervous breakdown, sobbing, hyperventilating, etc. I told my parents that I didn’t want to play anymore. Several days later, my instructor, the sweet man that he was, actually made a house call and talked with my parents and explained, not in a critical way, that I didn’t have that “I want to show them what I can do” mentality exhibited with respect to performance by some of his other students at or around my skill level, but said that he still wanted to work with me. My parents thanked him for making the time, but told him they’d respect my desire to not continue. Do I wish now that I had kept on? Kind of. Perhaps I could have negotiated lessons with no recitals, or some other arrangement that would have enabled me to burnish my proficiency and decide myself when I’d be ready to perform again. I should pick up the instrument again and see if ANY muscle memory is still there after 30+ years.