Word: ageing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that means she first performed in Evening with Champions when she was two years old. And lest you believe it's not possible, there are numerous witnesses in the senior class who remember her performances at the ages of three and four, when she sailed across the ice with the aplomb of someone...er, four times her age...
Watching the second-grader fly across the rink was enough to give many of the hundreds of people who saw the show a moment's pause. One had to wonder whether Kelly O'Grady, talented as she may be, might have lacked, at the age of two, a deep interest in becoming a figure-skater. It was also hard not to imagine that had her parents been more interested in gymnastics, or classical music, we wouldn't instead be watching the young champion training for the Summer instead of the Winter Games, or fiddling away in Carnegie Hall...
...children, we might have been jealous of Kelly O'Grady. But as adults, our admiration for her is twinged, not with jealousy but with pity. Certain kinds of performances demand skills that do require training at the age of three. The problem is that the champion involved has little or no choice about whether he or she actually wants to become a champion...
Only a handful of us at Harvard are internationally competitive athletes. Yet our school's greatest claim to fame is that we are all, in some way or another, very, very good at being young and exceptional. Having distinguished ourselves somehow by age 18, we have all become accustomed to hearing our elders say things like "Can you believe she did that at her age?" Unfortunately, it's the "at her age" qualifier that's particularly hard to drop. With all the child prodigies in the world, it's surprising we don't hear from more of them later...
...experiencing is a rite of passage to which native East Coasters have already been well weathered. Those from Massachusetts, New York and Minnesota know what to expect. Their blood has been thickening since their first snow storm. And like the booster shots given at such an early age you can't remember the pain of prodding needles, they cannot even remember the painful experience. I, on the other hand, with my thin blood and unfamiliarity with this "layering" of clothes idea, am more than mature enough to remember whatever pain and nuisance I am soon to experience...