How Katie Started To Sing

This is a short story about finding your interests and passions.

This short story explores how children discover new things about the world around them and about themselves all the time. At some point, children will discover something that they really enjoy doing and want to do for the rest of their lives. This can happen when they are very young or when they are almost adults. Actually, this can happen even when they are adults! There are many things that children (and adults!) like, such as sports, music, stories, poems, chess or playing the spelling bee. Depending on the personality of each child, they will choose an activity that they like the most, but the purpose of each of these activities is simply to have fun. Some children may even like several activities equally!

Sometimes, many children choose activities not because they like them, but because their parents like these activities and encourage them to participate in them. For example, it may be the case that in a family, everyone already plays sports. A child in the family will inevitably be encouraged to also play sports all the time. Or in a family where everyone is a musician, the chances are that the child will learn to play a musical instrument. This is a story about Katie. The young girl had not yet decided which activity she liked doing, so she simply did whatever her parents asked her to do. Katie’s parents were very famous ballet dancers. Since she was a baby, she had watched them dance all day long. They were very good with Katie, they loved her very much. But since they were dancers, they expected their little girl to take up dancing too, and that is why—since she had been very young, they made her listen to classical music and showed her ballet steps.

The dance steps were very difficult for the girl and she did not really enjoy doing them, but there was something she liked a lot about ballet and it was the music. When she heard the sound of the music that her parents danced to, the girl felt very happy! The girl was not very good at dancing, but she tried hard because that made her parents happy. She practised with them and accompanied them when they practised. The girl was sad about this because she did not know how to tell her parents that she did not want to dance.

One day, Katie’s parents enrolled her in ballet classes with an older woman, who had also been their teacher. She was called Professor Ivanovna. They left the girl in the care of the great teacher and went out, very proud because they thought that her daughter would become a great dancer. The girl was very sad, so when the class started, she started to cry. Mrs. Ivanovna asked her why she crying.

“I do not know how to dance and I do not like to dance,” said the girl, “but mom and dad want so much for me to dance that I do not know how to tell them that I do not like it at all!” The teacher, understanding what was happening to the little girl, invited her to sit down while she continued the class with the other girls. But something happened: Mrs. Ivanovna noticed that when the music sounded, little Katie’s face changed and the girl made movements with her fingers to follow the rhythm of the music. Mrs. Ivanovna had an idea. She left the rest of the girls with another teacher and invited Katie to take a walk with her.

They walked to a building in front of the ballet academy, a conservatory. Upon entering and listening to the music, Katie realized that singing and music was what she really liked. Mrs. Ivanovna spoke to the director of the orchestra, who happened to be her friend. When Katie’s parents returned, Mrs. Ivanovna led them to the opposite building. When they entered, they saw that the little Katie was singing a song along with the other students in the conservatory. Her parents realized that the girl was not a dancer, but a musician. And they were proud! They could see that their daughter was very talented at singing. When the girl finished singing, her parents hugged her because even though she was not going to be a ballet dancer, they were very proud of her and loved her so much, and seeing her happy made them happy. Her parents also told her that it was perfectly fine if Katie one day changed her mind and did not want to be a musician either, they would love her the same anyway!
same anyway!