What can I say? Tom was a good kid. He liked to have fun and try lots of different things. He has always been a good sport in many ways. Even when Dad thought he was just doing something to make Mom happy - like the Irish dance class she signed him up for.
When he was five, there was a talent show at church and Tom and Mom decided to get some magic tricks and turn Tom into a magician. He went on to win $50 at the Kane County Fair for his act a few years later. But the magic went out of the act when he realized that it wasn't really magic. The first tricks he learned, he didn't really realize they were tricks. It was so cute to see his eyes light up in surprise when the "magic" worked when practicing for that first performance.
The rest of the pictures I pulled together speak a bit for themselves. Max is the first picture because Tom rode his bike a few blocks to the neighbors house when we decided that a border collie would be a good choice for the family. He reviewed the pups and picked out Max. He came home to report that he found the dog who should join our family.
A few other notes: The Royal Marine Baracks pic was from our trip to England when Aunt Judy and Uncle Craig were there. Tom's spring break was a week earlier than Chris and Dave's so he went ahead and visited for the week. We connected on the weekend and did a few things together before he came home to go back to school and we stayed on for our week. The DNA Tower is in Perth when Dad had the opportunity to visit during a business trip. Tom said that it was good to see Dad and all but, no offense intended, it was strange because Dad was a part of life he left behind for his mission. The Toga party pic is funny because Tom was at U of IL after his mission as one of the world's oldest juniors living in the dorm. He was older than his RA even. The girls, of course, adored him - they would knock on his door in the middle of the night. Good thing for them he felt more like their big brother and didn't take advantage of the situations they put him in.
Tom's laugh has always been infectious. He was well liked in school. He liked to act. He played a winged monkey in the Wizard of Oz amomg other characters through the years at the community theater as well as in high school. An acting class at the park district got him started. He didn't have any trouble learning his lines and occasionally found himself cramming for them at the last minute and getting them right for performance. In high school, as one of the 12 Angry Jurors, most people don't know that he fell asleep during one scene during a performance. The others covered for him and he wasn't "out" for long, but it created an few interesting moments. Gotta ask him about that one. I think a knife was involved but no one got hurt.
In the medly pic, I love the one with Dave in their baseball uniforms. They played baseball more than any other sport.
We had Tom in karate class for a little while when we still lived in the city until we saw the other little boys being encouraged to be really agressive. Swim lessons were every summer and through the year. There was an indoor pool nearby for lessons in the winter. We moved to the "burbs the summer Tom entered first grade.
Tom went to soccer camp for a week one spring at the high school and liked it up to the last day. They had a big awards ceremony and only a couple groups received trophies. There was nothing handed out to everyone else to recognize them for their efforts, not even a certificate of participation as a souvenier. Tom was upset by that. He might not have been so upset if he'd been in one of the groups that did get recognition. Anyway, he didn't want to play soccer after that.
Although they both loved gymnastics, it was only available at the private club on the same nights as Scouts and we ended up choosing Scouting over the boys gymnastics. I wish we would have been in a school district with a boys gymnastics program because they probably would have pursued it and been great at it.
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