Earplugs? How can you miss a chance for a well timed chuckle when someone says something like that. As Sultan points out, soon it stops bothering you and you being to appreciate the humorous side of things. Looking back it was sort of like musical chairs starting with 500 8 year old kids. Some kids just walk away and everyone gets a chair the first few years. Move forward a couple of years and there are about 200 kids - still plenty of chairs with some kids getting their chair a little more quickly. Start getting into high school and the chairs start getting few in number. Some kids may get bumped off when they shouldn't be and others may get their chairs for awhile, but for the most part the most talented kids remain in the game and the wanna-be's are left without a chair. You may find the parents obnoxious, but at times you have to pity the kid who gets strung (pushed) along only to discover late in the game that his parents perpetuated the scam.