My thirteen-year-old son spent the best day of our Colorado vaction this summer* hanging by his fingers from a rock 250 feet above the ground, secured only by a belay from above held by a climbing instructor who was simultaneously securing a second climber. My son is also a skiier, has been since age five. When he was ten, his instructor complained to me, "He doesn't seem to care much about technique. All he wants to do is see how fast he can go down the steepest possible slope without killing himself." [I immediately knew that she did not have any boys of her own.] His twin sister is also a skiier, albeit a bit more conservative on the double black diamonds, which she has been taking since she was nine years old. She plays goalie for two very competitive soccer teams. Her goals against average is around 0.6, which means that roughly half of her games are shut-outs. This tends to frustrate the other teams, who usually come up with the bright idea that crashing into ...