Why can't I just be automatically good?

In the last week or so, Daddy has decided that I'm going to be taught proper dinner table manners, as he feels that mine are somewhat inadequate. He's given me an etiquette book to read (which I have been, dutifully), but this week he's decided to actually make me practice my table manners. Of course, he's been doing this slowly, and he decided that this week he's focusing on a single thing - how I hold my fork.

Of course, the way I hold a fork is very similar to how you would hold a spoon, as I'm very much a shoveller. As a result, I'm entirely unfamiliar with how to hold a fork properly. For the last couple of times I've been eating I've been railing against it, almost angrily against this stupid "proper" way of holding a fork that seems entirely in appropriate for a how a fork is designed, and designed to entirely prevent you from actually eating anything that's even slightly squidgey. Last night it pretty much came to a head, when I was pretty much throwing my hands up in frustration at how stupid the whole thing seemed.

Daddy was looking at my slightly dumbfounded at exactly how badly I was taking this whole etiquette thing, and being slightly hurt at how vigorously I was attacking it. And even I had to admit, my reaction seemed wholly out of proportion to the entire thing.

And then, I realised why I was railing against it so much - I sucked at it.

Like so many gifted kids in school, the kind of praise that I was given was based on how well I did at things. So, in a perfectly obvious turn of events, if I didn't do well at something, I would stop doing it. After all, you don't get praise at something if you don't do well, so why bother doing it? In many ways, this has been part of a lot of my behaviours throughout my life - I don't get the idea of training yourself until you're good at it. It frustrates me to fail, and the idea of sucking a whole lot to get good at something is a horrible idea to me.

And the thing about the etiquette thing was that the discomfort of using the fork a different way, and Daddy constantly correcting me, were constant reminders of how bad I was at the task. I didn't have the option of giving up, since Daddy wouldn't let me, so obviously I started lashing out at the task. Venting my frustration became hating the task, thinking it was stupid, etc.

And this was just one little task! I can only imagine what my reaction would have been if Daddy (or someone else) had been deciding to train me in a big skillset entirely that I had no experience and no natural skill at. I could very well have exploded, and done a lot of damage.

I will need to start paying attention to this, methinks. If I'm to be a good boy, I need to start learning how not to be frustrated at my own shortcomings, and learn how to be a good student when I'm not already good at something.