There is No Reality, Only Perception

There was a story told about that "old man" who graduated at our last recital at age 18.  The teacher said that she asked him when he was ten if he liked playing the piano.  His reply was no, that he just did it because it was important to his mother.  At 13, the teacher asked again, "Do you like playing the piano?"

This time, his answer was yes.  He went on to play in a jazz band in high school and to stand in front of an audience at age 18 and thank his parents and teacher, and to credit music with making him the person he was.

Last night, Freestone earned the "real" version of Minecraft, (not the limited Kindle version he's been playing) after maybe 5 or 6 weeks of practicing, including taking guitar lessons from Ruby so he could earn the game faster.  We had a convoluted system that I never could have come up with, because math scares me.  It doesn't scare Freestone, so he developed this system:  Each time he practiced violin, I gave him a fake dollar.  Each fake dollar translated into .66 real dollars.  So 66 cents.  Each time he practiced guitar, it was worth 1/4 of a fake dollar, (because it didn't take long), so 4 fake guitar dollars would equal one violin dollar or two-thirds of a real dollar, or .66.  Got that?

Last night, Freestone announced that he had run the numbers through a super-computer in Silicon Valley and...he had made it!  I cheered and told him to ask Dad if he could take him to buy Minecraft.  He sighed as if to say, "Man, you're out of touch," and said, "Mom, you don't go anywhere.  You buy it on the computer."  Oh.

Last night, Freestone and Ari were having a riot spawning dogs just outside their new village.  The sun started to go down in their alternate world and they both stopped playing and sat mesmerized as the square orange block slid down the computer screen toward the horizon and the "sky" turned pink.  Freestone said, "Oooh, pretty!"  I fear for the future.

Just as I was beginning to despair for the plight of the human race, Freestone tore his face away from the screen just long enough to turn to me and say, "Thanks for making me practice so I could earn Minecraft, Mom."

You're welcome.