There was once a time when I was told to climb the frame of a building, a tangled mess of steel beams lying upside-down in an empty lot. It probably would never have been done, if the box of cereal I had been warned not to lose hadn't been waiting for me at the top. I hesitated, having never climbed anything at all before, but Grandfather was with me, and he told me a story I will never forget.

"You... are an acrobat." Grandfather leapt, catlike, onto a nearby beam.
"Born to fly, you have been in the business of defying gravity for as long as you can remember." At the time, I didn't think this would help at all, but if Grandfather could jump as though he was half his age, I could do it too, and I didn't fail or even falter.
"You've worked in many circuses, and in each one, you most enjoy the thrill of doing fantastic things that no one else could." He sprung at what I thought was air, but at the peak of his jump, he grabbed on to a beam above him, and swung around to stand on it.
"Every time, you always watch carefully for your cue to perform." I was quite hesitant to try, but he gave me an encouraging smile, so I took a stab at it, and was surprisingly good.
"Even when no one is watching, there is a place you go to practice, to perform for the stray animals who gather there." Grandfather took a running jump to the next beam.
"In that place, you find you can do things more extravagant than anything you've ever done in the circus." After the last trick, I had found a new confidence, and a running jump wasn't very hard anyway, so I didn't wait this time before I followed.
"Turns, flips, and any kind of fancy jump you can imagine, they're all available to you, but only in that place." He flashed another smile at me, and I leapt off the beam, my arm held high to grab on to another beam above my path so I could swing forward to stand on it.
"It's like the place has some kind of magic that makes you more incredible than normal, or maybe it's just that your mind only allows you to be incredible in that place." It was amazing to me how agile Grandfather was, as I watched him perform the trick I just did with just as much, if not more agility.
"The place is nothing more than an empty lot, completely empty, except for the upside-down framework of a building." I didn't really understand what he meant until after I was finished with my flip to the next beam, and even then it didn't quite hit me.
"Before your last trick, you always wait for your cue, and even though you know no one is watching, you've been in the circus so long that it's become very important to you." I moved aside to let him land where I did, but somehow, Grandfather's flip ended on the beam not too far in front of me, so he leapt over a gap so small it looked like he simply walked to the one I was standing on, and he put his head to my ear.
"High in the sky, you can see your cue. Now is the time to perform your final move." I looked up, and sure enough, the box of cereal I was after was resting directly above my head. My mind completely blank, I performed a series of flips and leaps so elaborate I know not how to describe them, sometimes going to beams behind me in order to allow more tricks, and when I was finished, I found myself standing on the very top beam of that tangled mess of steel, cereal box in my hand.

I looked back down at Grandfather, expecting words of congratulation, but he only said one thing.
"You... are an acrobat."