Wife told me she needed absolute quiet. She was facing a deadline and could not be disturbed, and even if I tried, she would be in an intellectual trance, a meditative hibernation of pure creative thought. Any attempts to bother her would be fruitless.

But I knew better. "All I have to do is dance around naked with a fake violin and a Joshua Bell mask," I said.

"You’re right," she said, sighing, drifting into wonderful thoughts that had nothing to do with me.

I didn’t dance naked while wearing such a mask — dancing naked worked just fine — but the larger point is that Joshua Bell, a famous fiddler who headlines concert halls across the world, has, in short order, taken over my wife’s heart and is putting a dear strain on our blessed union.

Wife "discovered" Bell a few years ago, and her passing fancy for this handsome fellow is wavering towards the "obsession" side of the Celebrity Crush-o-Meter. In the past eight months, Wife has gone to see him at least three times in concert and once at a bookstore appearance, and probably several other times in secret. Nary a day goes by in which I do not hear music blasting in our home that originates from Mr. Bell’s precious "Strad."

Admittedly, I think the guy is obscenely talented, I enjoy his concerts thoroughly, and from what I have heard of him interviewed, he seems like a genuinely nice person.

I don’t try to stop Wife. But maybe I should. She brings him up in casual conversation ("Joshua is playing next week…"), endlessly promotes him to friends ("You must see him!"), and stops strangers on the street, looking them in the eye and saying, "I wish you could see J.B." (Yeah, she calls him "J.B." Like they’re best buds).

But I’ve got her racket figured out. There are older, more accomplished violinists (Itzhak Perlman), violinists who are as young and are considered perhaps as talented (Gil Shaham), or some who are at least as well-known (Anne-Sophie Mutter, Midori, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Sarah Chang). If you don’t see the differences between these violinists and Joshua Bell, you haven’t been paying attention: Bell is younger than Perlman, cuter than Shaham, and, unlike the quartet of ladies mentioned above, has more than one bow to play with.

Let us not underestimate the handsome factor. If Bell looked like, say, the late, great Marty Feldman or an animated corpse lacking a heart or soul, Wife would have about as much interest in "Joshua" as I would in shagging Tammy Faye Baker (which, I promise you, is none). Wife would not have Joshua Bell’s autograph on her CD of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto and would not be bothering me to see a Joshua Bell concert following an out-of-town wedding this summer.

Homebreaker

Nor is there any doubt that if Joshua Bell weren’t such a heartbreaker would he command the devoted affection of legions of females. Joshua Bell is the Elvis, the Beatles and Bono of classical music. Go to a concert and you will be surrounded by women — lots of women, of all ages, all swooning and filling seats that would have gone empty otherwise. Check out the many fan sites and blogs devoted to "Bellheads," who follow him with the same fervor as Deadheads following around Jerry Garcia, except Bellheads have jobs and bother to bathe more than once a month.

I would also say that if Joshua Bell were a writer, no matter how talented, I would have a hard time being a fan. No reflection on any specific writer (or reader, for that matter, or Wife), but those fiction peddlers who also happen to be attractive are not to be trusted. Why, you ask? Anthony Lane, the brilliant wisenheimer literary and film critic for The New Yorker, put things succinctly when he said that if one is pretty, one usually has little reason to complain, and thus nothing to write about:

My idea of a dependable writer is Flaubert, who looked like a dugong with a head cold, or George Eliot, who bore a surprising resemblance to last year’s winner of the Kentucky Derby.

Off the top of my head, I can think of several well-known writers of both sexes who are reasonably attractive and who I consider excellent talents, but I would bet a trainload of banknotes that they just didn’t start writing fiction because they thought they were good at it. Something bothers them, eats at them, whether from childhood or adolescence.

That’s what I’m talkin’ about

Does anyone who is beautiful, wealthy, well-adjusted, and happy suddenly wake up at age 30 and say, "I’m going to write the next ‘Ulysses’?"

This insight into the world of letters gives me no relief, of course. J.B, please do me a favor. Write a letter to Wife, in care of Bookfraud, and say that you’re gy, even though you’re not, not that there’s nothing wrong. Please. It’s my last, desperate measure. After all the money this household has spent supporting your career, It’s the least you can do to save my marriage.

 

On the excellent Miss Snark blog, which features advice from a literary agent, a hapless reader wrote that she hadn’t heard from her “agent” in months. When this reader contacted the agent, asking what publishers had seen the work in question, the agent got angry at the author; how dare you bother me, the agent said.

But the agent did inform the writer that she had a good lead, someone very interested in the novel, so don’t worry and don’t bother me again.

This would-be novelist later revealed out that she had forked over $5,000 to this “agent” as a reading fee. My heart sank. I would have a better chance of getting her novel published than this agent-scammer. Osama bin Laden would have a better chance. A feral cat would have a better chance.

I tried my hardest to look at this person with pity. Still, I couldn’t help but feel just a trifle smug, how could so one be so stupid? She didn’t read all the warnings on the Internet and in books about such shysters — God, like, open your eyes!

I know these guys

The problem with such an attitude is that I forget how vulnerable we make ourselves in writing fiction. And though I have not been scammed in the pocketbook, I have opened my soul to some extremely mean, rotten people, who I let have power over me.

Here are but two examples:

–I once befriended a grad student and her husband, also a writer with some measure of success. For reasons that will soon become clear, let’s call him Dickwipe.

Dickwipe was racist, mean, foul-mouthed, and rude to his (now divorced) wife. Sadly (and I am humiliated I let it get to this), I let Dickwipe read my novel/thesis, which, in truth, isn’t very good. He never spoke to me again — since I wasn’t going to be a “star” in his eyes, I couldn’t help his career and wasn’t worth knowing. In retrospect, I see now that Dickwipe only wanted to associate with people who could shine a little light on him.

Since then, Dickwipe has gone on to modest publishing success and an academic post at a Midwestern university. I hope he’s happy making people there hate him.

–Another in my rouges gallery is a man we shall call Assface. He was one of my first writing teachers, but also a mean, drunk, hateful person. Though Assface could give excellent advice, if your writing wasn’t up to his standards, fire breathed out of his assface into your face.

There were several first-time writers in Assface’s workshop, and he seemed to enjoy abusing them in particular, sending many home in tears (not me! but barely). He was spiteful and bitter that his own work had not gotten more attention, and took his fury out on 24 and 25-year-olds. It’s amazing that I didn’t quit writing back then.

The idea of “constructive criticism” was as alien to Assface as a day without a fifth of Jim Beam. Despite some withering things Assface said of my work, he apparently liked it enough to want me in the MFA program he ran (I had moved to another city). I sent him a story for his perusal, just to show where I was with my work.

His response was the most insulting letter I have ever received, so nasty and awful that I can recite entire sections of it. He said “I’m glad that you’re a failure”; “you can’t stand your characters, and you can’t stand yourself;” and “you’re not Prince Hamlet, so stop acting like him.” In the same letter, he flogged his MFA program, saying that a particular female professor who decended from the 12 Tribes of Israel “is always on the look out for nice Jewish boys like you.”

I can still smell the booze on the parchment. Just thinking about Assface makes my eyes roll back in my head and neck swivel 360 degrees.

A writing teacher to be

I know what you’re thinking: why did I associate myself with these losers? Was I that insecure, that unsure of myself that I was desperate for any type of attention I could get, no matter how despicable the person giving said attention?

The short answer: yes. I was insecure, I needed help for my fiction, and didn’t know if I was worth a damn, which made me an ideal target for these manipulative pricks. And yes, I feel like an idiot for having associated with these losers. But had one of them suggested that I pay them $5,000 to help me get published, I would have at least considered the offer for more than three seconds.

Years later, I’m wise to such types and know not to put my self-worth in their suitcases. The sad fact of it is these two are just the worst of the bunch. Wife has told me of similar encounters with such men (and it is almost always men), who are either power-tripping or stroking their own pathetic egos by humiliating others.

It’s gotten me so upset that I forgot why I wrote this in the first place.

Oh, yeah. Beware of shysters posing as literary agents, don’t pay them up front, and if you see Dickwipe or Assface, punch them in the face, hard. With brass knuckles.

 

Due to a major technical snafu on our part, this post disappeared for several hours this afternoon. Not that it was missed. –The Eds.

Never did I envision myself marrying another writer. I knew artists could be selfish, insecure, and prone to fits of undecipherable emotional imbalance, and I didn’t think it would be a good idea to hitch my star to someone who so closely resembled myself.

But I met a fellow scribbler — far more stable than most — and fell in love. Early on in our courtship, Girlfriend (now Wife) and I, sensing that we needed such a list, devised our House Writing Rules that have served our relationship well:

1. You can only read the other person’s work for pleasure. You cannot critique it, even if it resembled random scrapings from the bottom of a police boot (my stories, actually).

2. Jealousy is verboten. You can only support the other person’s career, and can’t say anything negative about it, such as, “Bookfraud, it’s time to quit or commit suicide.”

3. I can’t remember what this one was. Oh, yeah. If you read the other’s work and don’t like it, you can say anything except, “Well, that was interesting.”

Writers: ignore this man

If we did not adhere to these rules, Girlfriend probably still would have become Wife, like caterpillar transforming to butterfly, but I promise you that it would have been much less smooth a metamorphosis and filled with awkward, embarrassing moments, like trying to explain to Wife why I called her a caterpillar.

So it was with some surprise when Wife recently asked me to help her make changes to a short story. Granted, the conditions were extreme: the piece has been accepted for publication but the editor asked for last-second changes, and not minor ones. Wife’s usual trusted readers were out of pocket, so I found myself discussing with Wife the merits of adding a character here, some dialogue there.

Because Wife was thoroughly exhausted from working endlessly on this story, her defense mechanisms were down, and when I said, “The beginning sucks, the middle sucks, and the ending sucks,” she took it for the constructive, loving criticism it was meant to be.

I’ve come to realize that a bunch of non-codified rules have governed my writing world for several years.

To wit, graduate school, where I spent many wasted hours toiling over a craptastic novel that would be my “thesis” for my MFA. In workshop, where I had major “issues” with some of my fellow scribblers, I had a list of very simple rules when my story was critiqued:

1. Never talk while the class discussed my work, no matter how boneheaded any given comment might be.

2. Never make excuses for the work (“It’s a first draft;” “No, what I meant was ‘The president loved boating with guys;” “But I was trying to create an emotional flashback with the 400-pound trapeze artist.”). Every person who made excuses came off like a loser who couldn’t have been bothered to correct their mistakes.

3. Quickly identify stupidheads. When they speak in class, close eyes and fantasize about keying their cars. Throw out their written critiques without reading them. Crass, I know, but otherwise I would end up screaming at a piece of paper.

Unfortunately, the fine writing program I attended had some unwritten rules of its own. These were made very plain when I had the audacity to criticize particular students’ work.

In the first workshop of my grad school career, politics and pettiness ruled the day. One story we critiqued was an overwrought mess, with a protagonist who managed to be both a psycho-bitch-from-hell and boring. It was also chock full of hateful secondary characters who made Holocaust jokes, and contained language that read like a cross between a Harlequin Romance and “Naked Lunch.” (just one example: “She worried her rival had the biggest breasts, the most money, the tightest cunt”). It was badness at such a rarified level that I had several non-graduate school friends read the story, in case my senses had departed me; my senses were just fine.

But in class, it was a different verdict. Everyone loved her story. Loved it! Raved about it. When I raised my voice in disbelief and dissent, I was shouted down like a homosexual dancing Jew gambler at a tent revival. I later discovered the school’s code of omerta: never slam the shit when the shitter is friends with most of the class. You might see why I wanted to have guidelines for dealing with these people.

(Not surprisingly, the writer was a psycho-bitch-from-hell who tossed out grand pronouncements about her other writers’ stories even though she hadn’t bothered to read them before class. Thanks for sharing!)

Marriage material

Rules are made to be broken, naturally, and the best example I have has nothing to do with writing. Several years ago, a friend of Wife’s was casually dating a fellow who worked for a record company. On a Friday afternoon, he asked her if she would be free that night, after he picked up some musicians at the airport.

But she was reading “The Rules,” that wonderful dating guide by now-divorced authors, which posited that a woman shall not accept a weekend date offered less than three years in advance. She demurred, watched “Home Improvement,” had a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, and went to bed.

The next day, the boyfriend called, excited, screaming. “Too bad you didn’t come out last night — I picked up the Rolling Stones at the airport! And we partied all night!”

When Wife’s friend related this tale, I quite literally screamed. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” It was as if I had been denied a night in the loving embrace of Sir Mick and Keith.

Now we are at the ending of this piece. But I have no good way to finish. And rule number one in the writing business is always to have a great lead and a great kicker.

So. Beware of the Ides of March. As well as my perspective on anything.

 

A particularly annoying piece of music has been running through my head for a few days, which has led me to the eternal question plaguing every author: how does Robert Evans relate to my writing?

The song in question, “Get High on Yourself,” was part of a 1980 NBC television special to battle adolescent drug use. The show was highlighted by a giant group song a la “We Are the World:”

The glow can come at any time
Keep that space open for love to come inside
And you’ll be living when you do
Just keep the clouds from your own sky
And you’ll come shining through

Get high on yourself
Get high on yourself
’Cause we’re all here to help
You get high on yourself

Getting high on himself

Ignoring the great masturbatory possibilities here, you may see why this song did not keep Our Nation’s Youth from Just Saying Yes. Picture a chorus of people that included Bob Hope — a man most teenagers of that era would not trust with advice about buying gum, much less drugs — and you get the idea. If there was a anti-drug message that made kids want to do drugs, this was it.

The man behind this debacle was above-mentioned Robert Evans. Evans, a legendary Hollywood producer (“Chinatown,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Godfather”), had been busted for possession of about 1,421 kilos of cocaine, and instead of going to the Big House, was sentenced to community service. “Get High on Yourself” was his community service.

In “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” a hilarious and fascinating film about Evans’s career, the man gives a television interview saying (and I recall from memory here), “This is what I want to be remembered for. ‘Get High on Yourself’ is the most important thing I’ve done.”

He also called his TV special “the Woodstock of the 80s.” You can smell the bullshit steaming from the screen.

“Get high on yourself, Get high on yourself!”

Evans is a great raconteur, but about as trustworthy as, well, Robert Evans. When he declares “Get High on Yourself” as the high mark of his career (not “The Godfather,” not “Chinatown”) he probably set a new low for insincerity in a town where slimy obsequiousness is the norm.

My usual reaction to such drek like “Get High on Yourself” is snotty laughter, but it is making me uncomfortable, to the point where I can’t dismiss it with a wave of the hand or lame joke. Evans’ insincerity is akin to my own fiction.

For instance, let’s take the blogospere. It is littered with blogs that are both literary and personal in nature, and what strikes me is how honest and sincere many of them are. Some strike a perfect balance between the heart and mind, while others are so heartfelt, so beyond brutal honesty that they strike one as being the head doctor’s notes from the psych ward.

The kid stays in the picture

In a circumspect way, this is the same chemical reaction that I have when I think of “Get High on Yourself:” the song has the great allure of allowing one to enjoy it by acting superior; the irony is overwhelming.

And I, sadly, seem to be constitutionally incapable of writing fiction that isn’t consciously humorous or that holds emotions close to the vest.

My fiction has always leaned towards wacky, clever, and peripatetic. I try to be sincere in my intentions, but I can’t seem to help leavening drama with humor and scenes with Heavy Thoughts.

There are plenty of writers who have made a good living doing this, many of a 60s origin: Thomas Pynchon is Exhibit A, but there’s also John Barth and William Gaddis, and, by his own admission, Tom Stoppard. (Also Richard Powers and William T. Vollman.)

On the other extreme, there also books (not necessarily authors) that revel in their seriousness of purpose to the point of pain: “Beloved” comes to mind (I couldn’t finish it) or “The Mayor of Casterbridge” (a book I actually liked but is overwhelming it its bleakness).

The novels that balance the two extremes are perfect: “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” “Invisible Man,” and “Midnight’s Children,” for instance. (For you 19th Century aficionados, see “Jane Eyre,” “Wuthering Heights,” and “Great Expectations.”)

Over the years, I’ve learned to address sincerity in my work. It ain’t easy. For that means giving characters hearts to go along with their brains, and, as we all know, hearts are fragile vessels that swell with love and are meant to be broken.

And so I try to create characters that feel pain, cry, throw dishes at their spouses, do incredibly crappy things to each other or commit unspeakably selfless acts. But as fast as you can say, “Well, yeah, you’re talking about the human condition, bud,” I cringe and withdraw to my literary hole in the ground.

This is no indictment of any writer or his or her way of writing. It is, though, a painful reminder of my own limitations. The listing of which is why anyone reads this blog.

 

Because I had a rare urge to compose a list, triggered by my thoughts on Tchaikovsky, Vladimir Horowitz, and the fear that about four people on the planet will care about such thoughts and everybody else will skip over them, no matter how brilliant, here’s my personal compendium of the coolest things that have been said in the middle or at the end of rock songs.

I don’t know why I have 13, except it was late, I wrote this in a few minutes, and I have no idea of what I was doing. I will regret this in the morning, but don’t think I’m easy.

Let me know your favorites!

13. “His power is in your hands.” Helmet, “Gigantor” theme. It’s cool. Trust me. It’s cooler than me, even.

12. “This monkey wants a word with you.” Mark Mothersbaugh, Devo, “Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA.” I love a song with the lyrics, “Smart patrol/nowhere to go/suburban robots that monitor reality.” I mean, I love all of the many songs with those lyrics in them.

11. “Get down!” Mick Jagger, near the end of “Street Fighting Man.” I know this wasn’t spontaneous. Mick and Keith planned it out for months, years. But it’s still coooooooool.

Wish fulfillment

10. “And I’ve given away no secrets!” Joe Strummer, The Clash, “Clampdown.” OK, it’s part of the lyrics. He didn’t say it as a spontaneous rage against capitalism and intolerance. I don’t care. I also told this to Wife about something having to do with kilts. Never mind.

9. “Aww, walk the dog!” Elvis Presley, “Blue Suede Shoes.” Proof that before he Dilaudid, fried lard sandwiches, and shooting televisions took over his life, Elvis was cool. In fact, he was cooler after he discovered shooting TVs.

8. “I got blisters on my fingers!” John Lennon, “Helter Skelter.” I still don’t know what the fuck John was talking about. It’s cool. But what the fuck was John talking about? If he played guitar, he would have calluses on his fingers! He couldn’t have gotten blisters!

7. “Hey, what’s in it for me? What is this? Hey gimmie…where are my socks? Where are my underwear?” Joey Ramone, The Ramones, “We’re a Happy Family.” Thus wraps up a song that begins, “Sitting here in Queens, eating refried beans.” Poetry.

Joe, R.I.P.

6. “Walk it home.” Lou Reed, Velvet Underground, from “Waiting for the Man.” It’s a song about scoring heroin in Harlem. I can’t say I have a lot of experience doing that, though there was that time in Wyoming. Just me and another cowboy, up in the mountains, tending sheep. There was an erotic note in the air. I was experiencing something I had never felt before, feelings for another man. Unfortunately, this retarded guitar riff that just won an an Academy Award was playing over and over and over and over until it rendered me permanently impotent.

5. “Don’t stop me!” Bon Scott, AC/DC, in Highway to Hell. Well, it kinda sounds spontaneous. Don’t stop Bon from going to hell! Which, sadly, is probably where the poor mate ended up.

4. “We are Spinal Tap from the UK! You must be the U.S.A.!” David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap, “Tonight We’re Going to Rock You (Tonight!),” movie soundtrack only. The perfect introduction for the Tap’s spectacular U.S. tour. And to think, the first time I saw this movie, there were heavy metal heads thinking that this was a real concert film.

It’s fucking awful

3. “Oooooh, yeah!” Mick again, at the very, very end of Sympathy for the Devil. I guess you had to be there. Which means 16, driving around the suburbs, and fried out of your gourd.

2. “It’s fucking awful. Stop it! Stop it! It’s fucking awful! Torture!” Johnny Rotten, in the middle of recording Johnny B. Goode/Roadrunner. He didn’t know the words. He made this up instead. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

1. “Move over rover, and let Jimi take over! ” An oh-so-obvious choice, but I can’t help myself. (If I have to tell you who said this and in what song, you really need to get out of the house more. Or, I will send you an illegal file of the song. For real.)

Five of these people are dead. None are women. I have no idea what this means, except that I’m obsessed with death and am a mysoginist. I tried to think of a quote from Chrissie Hynde (not dead!) or Janis Joplin (dead!), but alas. I think that Grace Slick (not dead!) sang at the end of a song, “do it ’till you make her…” but since this is a family newspaper and this indicates that a woman might actually enjoy sex, I won’t print it.

Also, if you’re reading this, it means you got to the end.

Cool.

 

Now that the Winter Olympics are over, and Bode Miller, Sasha Cohen, and other Americans made their usual sorry display of Americanness to the world, I will ply you with what I consider my greatest contribution to society, and it is not even this rapturous prose that passes before your eyes as you procrastinate working on that office project, divorcing your husband, assassinating an evil dictator, or writing the Great American Novel you’ve been talking about for 20 years.

Let us hearken back to the summer of 1984. I was a college student on break, thought the world irredeemably stupid, and deeply resented having to spend my summer with my parents in the Bookfraud household. Meanwhile, the Summer Olympics was taking place in Los Angeles.

A role model for us all

This was the Olympics that the Soviet Union boycotted, as a mature gesture of nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah after the U.S. boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. (Which had followed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which has led us to the beautiful state of world harmony we live in today.) Because the Soviets and the rest of the Iron Curtain weren’t competing, the United States had an easy go of it in events like fencing, cycling, and gymnastics, events in which Americans would usually finish in 87th place between Bulagrastan and France.

“Team USA” was winning gold medals everywhere. So I, a cynical college student who saw no value in anything mainstream, was subjected to an endless effluent stream of the following headlines: “America’s Gold Rush!”; “Scoring Olympic Gold!”; and, most obviously and sickening, “USA Goes for the Gold!”

I worked as a counselor at a day camp that summer. One of my oldest friends worked with me, and we agreed that all this disgusting going for the gold had to stop. We had to save our great nation. Together, we devised a new, untested idea to counter this orgy of American jingoism, an idea so powerful, that it has stood the test of time and has proven its greatness, again and again:

Go for the Bronze.

This is a very simple concept, which goes as follows: anybody can try to be first, and if you finish second, it was because you were trying to be first. But it takes someone special to try to be third. Nobody tries to be third. Nobody goes for the bronze. And therefore, when you Go for the Bronze, that makes you special.

We indoctrinated the campgoers, who were 7 to 9 year old boys, in this brilliant worldview. As they queued up for lunch or ran a footrace, my friend and I would yell “Go for the Bronze!” and they would oblige, trying to push two kids in front of them or slowing down as they headed to the finish line. They knew the greatness in coming in third.

But Go for the Bronze is more than just a concept. It has a historical imperative to dominate history. Look at the Olympics and Russian Irina Slutskaya, who was the Bronze medalist in women’s figure skating.

As she took the ice as the last competitor of the night, all Irina had to do was skate a clean program without falling, and the gold medal would be hers. But that would have been too easy. That would have been how “just anybody” would have approached it. Instead, Irina chose a harder, more noble way.

So she fell — not too hard, not too soft, but just right. She managed to drop beind Sasha Cohen and the Japanese skater who everybody has already forgotten. It was a remarkable achievement, the highlight of the Olympics. You can tell how amazing it was by Slutskaya’s locker-room reaction following the medal ceremony.

This extends into all spheres of life. Ralph Nader could have graciously told people to vote for Al Gore in 2000, helping ensure more national peace and prosperity. He would have let Pat Buchanan come in third, but Ralph had to Go for the Bronze.

And President Bush, while no longer competing for elected office, put together a Go for the Bronze Government — third-rate cabinet secretaries, third-rate cronies running departments, third-rate lobbyists dictating environmental policy. You have to really try hard to not staff the most important jobs in the nation with the best and the brightest, the first-rate (and even second-rate) personnel. George himself was a third-rate student, a third-rate businessman, and a third-rate intellect. Kind of inspiring, don’t you think?

So if you’re a parent, listen carefully. The “right” way to raise your child is to tell them to try their hardest, and someday, they might be valedictorian, CEO of a company, or even President of the United States. But that simply will raise hopes that reality will inevitably demolish.

You now know the truly right thing to do. When you attend their swim meet, watch them in a piano competition, or are even helping them with the application for their third choice of a college, there is only one thing to say in order to fulfill your duty as a parent:

Kid, don’t worry about winning. Winning is for losers. Go for the Bronze.