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"That's it, I quit! Skating is stupid and I hate it and I hate you for making me do it!” With that proclamation Jean-Louis, JJ’s eleven-year-old son, stomps off the ice, flings himself onto a nearby bench, and tries to pull his skates off without untying them. When this doesn’t work he starts kicking the ground in frustration.
JJ sits down next to him, tries to clap a hand to his son’s shoulder. “Get off of me!” he says, shrugging his hand away. Isabella looks over from the other side of the rink where she’s leading their two-year-old twins in meandering circles. JJ flashes her a quick thumbs up, to indicate that he can handle whatever the boy is about to unleash on him.
The fact that he’s pretty sure he can’t handle it doesn’t really matter. He’ll do it anyway.
“What’s the problem Lulu?” he asks, leaning back to give him space. The kid is still visibly shaking, but at least he’s stopped slamming his feet against the ground.
“Shouldn’t it be obvious? I thought you were supposed to be smart, Papa!”
JJ just looks at him. If he talks more, Jean-Louis is just going to keep on arguing, but if he keeps quiet, the kid will get to the point. He didn’t figure this out until he’d been a dad for seven years, but he knows it, now.
It doesn’t take long.
“I can’t do this!” Jean-Louis shouts, prompting another concerned glance from his mother. “I didn’t inherit any of your skills or Mémé and Pépè’s skills, all my movements are clumsy, and I can’t even figure out how to do a stupid camel spin even though I’ve been practicing for weeks.” His voice catches, and tears start to bubble in his eyes and dribble down his flushed cheeks. “I should be able to do it by now. If I were as good as you, I could do it.”
JJ isn’t sure how to take this. When he was young, he didn’t vocalize his lack of confidence. At 11, he’d laughed off his failures, insisting that he would overcome them through sheer force of will. He’d tear himself to pieces in private of course, crying in bed with a pillow over his face so that is parents wouldn’t hear. Jean-Louis doesn’t do that - doesn’t seem to, anyway. These days, he spends most nights tending to the two-year-olds - so, actually he doesn’t know if Jean-Louis does that or not.
But here’s Jean-Louis crying his eyes out, no fumes of false confidence seeping from his skin. If he’s worried about his skills, at least he's not hiding it. At least it won't erupt in a public meltdown because he refused to acknowledge his pain to anyone except himself.
JJ wants to pump his son up and assure him that he’s the king of the world, but he doesn't know how much that will actually help.
Instead, he says, “it can take a lot longer than two weeks to master specific moves. Sometimes, it can take years. If you still can’t do it by the time you’re ready for Junior Worlds, we’ll just help you create a program that doesn’t include camel spins. It’s not the end of the world if you can’t do one thing.”
Biting his lip and pressing his head against JJ’s shoulder, Jean-Louis whimpers that he doesn’t want to fail at anything. “I want to get everything perfect like you do.”
“That takes time,” says JJ wrapping an arm around the kid’s shoulder. “You think I was perfect when I was your age? I’m not even perfect now - I just got good at hiding my mistakes.”
“I’ve never seen you make a mistake before.”
“You’re kidding me - remember when I was showing you different kinds of jumps and I fell on my butt? Wasn’t that funny?”
Jean-Louis shakes his head, fists clenching in his lap. He says, “I don’t want to do stuff I’m not good at. It’s too hard, and it’s embarrassing. Everyone at my skating class says I should be a lot better than I am because you and Pépè and Mémé are Olympic champions, and they make fun of me when I mess up.”
JJ squeezes his son’s shoulder harder as he tries to figure out what to say. It’s hard to concentrate while trying to keep an eye on Isabella and the other kids - it’s not fair to leave her in charge of two toddlers and a five-year-old while he deals with Jean-Louis. Also, it’s hard to know how to reply. Does he point out the inappropriateness of his classmate’s behavior? Does he encourage him to keep skating despite this? Or does he tell Jean-Louis that that happened to him, too?
After scratching the back of his neck and sighing, he finally says, “Lulu, you’re not alone. I grew up with Pépè and Mémé, and everyone I met expected me to be an Olympic champion like they were. When I couldn’t measure up I pretended I didn’t care and that I was better than I really was. I didn’t talk about how frustrated I felt - I just buried it until it exploded out of me - I even started panicking during the Grand Prix.”
“Wait, what?” Jean-Louis looks up, eyes wide. “You? But you’re always so confident about everything.”
“I had to work on that. You’re doing better than I was at your age, because you say what you’re feeling instead of just talking a big game about how great you are.” He reaches over, wraps the boy in a hug. Jean-Louis relaxes into it, wet eyes flickering shut. “How about we call it a day and get some hot chocolate? Your mom wanted to check out that new bakery next to the bus station. You up for it?”
Jean-Louis nods, and JJ stands up to let Isabella and the girls know it’s time to go.