Like Mother, Like Son

I found out Teen has 1) been nominated for a national scholarship by the classics department at the university and 2) won a monetary prize for his Latin translation. This all happened a while ago, and he didn’t tell anyone!

I have always been careful not to give Teen the message that his intelligence (or the fact that he’s skipped a few grades and started college young) makes him special. (WHO HE IS is what makes him special…to me, anyway) But this not telling anyone about his accomplishments is taking that a little too far!

But do you know what? I do the same thing! I’ll usually post things here in my LJ (because this LJ is really for ME), but I often don’t even tell my writer’s group or even my closest friends when I sell a new book or whatever. (I DO usually tell my immediate family, though!) I don’t know why. I know part of it is I don’t want people to think I’m bragging…and part of it is I wanted this so badly (to be a published author, I mean) and I’m almost afraid I’ll wake up some morning and find it’s not real…and part of it is I know people will say “congratulations,” but then I don’t know what I’m supposed to say after that (I’m not good at just gracefully accepting a compliment and saying “thank you”)…but most of it just doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know why it’s hard to share sometimes. But apparently I’ve passed that little quirk onto one of my children.