Parenting & Family Quote by Wally George

There is a faintly disarming optimism in Wally George framing child performers as a kind of mutual-aid society, an antidote to the usual story we tell about show business: predatory, competitive, built on scarcity. The line works because it’s both a compliment and a self-justifying origin myth. By contrasting “kids in show business” with “regular, average students,” George isn’t just describing two school environments; he’s carving out a special category of person, one defined by urgency and professionalism. These aren’t kids who dabble. They’re already learning the unofficial curriculum: how to network, how to read power, how to turn proximity into opportunity.

The subtext is more complicated than the sweetness suggests. “They would gather behind you” carries the language of a team huddle, but also of an audience, even a posse: support that can look like solidarity and still function as informal pressure to keep producing, keep pleasing. “Help you to succeed in any way possible” is the tell. In normal adolescence, friendship can be casual, even disposable. In a child-performer ecosystem, relationships often have stakes: whose parents have connections, who gets the audition tip, who can get you in the room.

Context matters, too. George came up in an era when local TV and celebrity culture were hardening into a full-time industry, and “being in show business” increasingly meant living inside a self-contained world. The quote reads like nostalgia, but it also reveals a survival strategy: recast an intense, transactional environment as community, so the cost of growing up too fast feels like belonging.