Send ✈ for an eye opening memory.
Little Victoria Chase, then strictly going by Tori and refusing to answer to anything else, was about eight years old. She had impressively tight gold ringlets framing her face, flushed with excitement as she bounced in place waiting for Sailor Moon to come on. But just as it started her father strolled into the room, coffee in hand, surveying her with an intense, critical gaze. She ignored it as long as she could, knowing even that young that the gaze came with a long talk that would cut into her tv time.
Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore and looked up at him. He sad next to her, tall and slim, still in his business attire from meeting with investors. Looking from her to the tv, which was now blaring the Sailor Moon opening sequence, he kept his gaze there for a moment without cracking even a smile. He brought his eyes back to her and gestured at the TV.
“What can you get from this?”
“How will this help you in the future?”
“Uhm, I ‘unno. I like trying to draw the characters sometimes though!”
“Can you be better than the people that draw them for the show?”
“What?! No, daddy! That’s crazy. They’re the best.”
Her father turned a little more, facing her entirely now, taking his glasses off and looking at her. He pointed at her, his expression serious, almost angry as he waved his finger in her face.
“If you can’t be the best, Victoria, don’t bother. You’re either the best, or you’re nothing, do you understand? You better find what you’re good at, or this world will leave you in the dust. Even this family will. Not intentionally, but you’ll struggle to find mediocrity, and keep asking us for hand outs, and bleed us dry. And we don’t want that, do we? So make your own success. That’s what you need to be focusing on. Not wasting time like someone who’s aiming so much lower than that.”
He then stood and left, the silence in his wake nearly deafening as Victoria shut everything out. Her father’s words were swirling in her brain as panic gripped her, and she frantically began rifling through the coffee table books until she found one about something she could manage. Finally, her little hands uncovered a book, From Color to Chiaroscuro by Mark Jefferson, which she picked up and began sifting through.