Toward the end of the school year, one of the teachers at Mickey's school decided to institute an annual talent show for the students. The First Annual. The note came home in his folder and instantly I decided Mickey would have to sing. He agreed. I thought of different genres to explore and somehow landed on "patriotic". Always a sure winner. At first, we thought he would accompany himself on the autoharp, but then, wisely, I decided playing the auto-harp and singing was simply too much. So, we decided we'd pull accompaniment off of iTunes. Of course, I have no idea about iTunes, but Papa being the young one of us two, he was called upon to find our accompaniment. When we were mulling around the auto-harp, I landed on "America the Beautiful", since I was able to find some simplified chords for the auto-harp. Even though we ditched the auto-harp early on, "America the Beautiful" stuck. "On that day", I was running late, having gotten tied up at work, so I called the school to say I was coming and to not let Mickey sing first thing. As it turned out, Mickey was the last talent to perform. When I got there, Mick had such a puss on. I figured he had gotten in trouble with his teacher. I mouthed to him "did you get in trouble", but a shake of the head "no" was his response. Then he mouthed back, "I'm scared." Holy crap. I worked with him on all sorts of vocal technique and it never occurred to me that he'd be nervous. There was nothing I could do or say at this late date but sit back and let things unfold as they may. When you watch the video, watch how he looks at the camera before the songs begins. There's nothing but utter joy on his face. And then, right after, seriousness and concentration takes over - two things rarely seen from Mick - and he launches into his song. Although I cut the audience response short, his song got the greatest response from the adult led audience. Days after, I ran in to folk who were not there but had heard about his performance and they had to stop me to tell me how great they heard he was. And he was. Now, we're not talking about American Idol, but for a second grader conquering his fear and singing a nationally important song, he did GREAT! (And watch the teacher behind him being cross with the kindergarteners on the front row - love it!)