Choosing your child's destiny

My wife is convinced that O needs an activity outside of school. Not that I disagree, but choosing the right one is a big decision. I don't want to pigeonhole him, but at the same time I do want to funnel him into things he would enjoy, we're shaping the direction of his life with this type of decision. O has not found his niche in life quite yet other than schoolwork (he is of course a very bright boy!), so what we choose now will affect future life altering choices. The first thought of activity for boys is athletics, but O isn't the most athletically oriented boy. It's not that he's uncoordinated or couldn't do them, it's just he's not that interested. He'd rather read his Garfield books or play with his plethora of stuffed animals, or watch TV. Q on the hand is probably going to be a little jock, wants to play anything with a ball. Despite this, our first thought was soccer. O waffled about wanting to play, but ultimately my procrastination made us miss the sign up, so no soccer. Next we considered flag football, swim lessons, and Jr Jazz basketball. O has a strong need to be very good at anything he does (he broke down in tears when he didn't win his kindergarten spelling bee), so I voted down flag football, just didn't think he'd like it or excel. Swim lessons are a struggle because he fears going under water (like panic attack fears it, which make parts of lessons difficult), so we put those off. O to my surprise wanted to play Jr Jazz, but we were too late for this session sign up. We moved on from sports, what about a musical instrument? No dice, not interested. Then I hit upon an idea, some sort of performance class/group. O is a natural performer, loves the attention, and for all his anxieties, getting up in front of a group is not one of them. This is a boy who did a stand-up routine for his kindergarten talent show and totally killed it. I had a hard time bringing myself to sign him up for one of those theme park type performing song/dance groups, I'm not so masochistic to want to sit through those performances (although I would for my boys). We decided on an acting class at the university youth theatre group, and amazingly were not too late to register despite class starting today. I hope it's the right decision, and he enjoys himself. Who knows, we may be creating a monster, another Hollywood diva actor, lord knows he's already got down melodramatic.