At age 10, Yo-Yo Ma sent this adorable letter to his hero Leonard Bernstein

Kids say the darndest things, prodigies included.

In 1962, when he was just 7 years old, the now-illustrious cellist Yo-Yo Ma performed for President John F. Kennedy in a concert conducted by the great Leonard Bernstein. Ma played alongside his sister, Yeou-Cheng Ma.

A year later, the two performed on TV, again following Bernstein's lead.

Then, two years later, the 10-year-old cellist wrote Bernstein a short message, which Bernstein since reprinted in his 2013 book "The Leonard Bernstein Letters."

Here's the full letter:

Whether Bernstein attended that recital at 1:45 p.m. on January 19, 1966 has since been lost to history.

More certain is that Ma's lightning-quick rise to stardom began with a veteran composer giving a young boy a chance at greatness.

It's a pretty familiar story.

Consider Neil deGrasse Tyson, America's favorite astrophysicist who met astronomer Carl Sagan in 1975, when he was applying to colleges. 

Tyson says he still looks back fondly on their first encounter, recalling Sagan's willingness to let the young Bronx teenager tour Cornell's campus and even open up his home during a snowstorm.

Then there's Steve Jobs, who called Bill Hewlett when he was 12 years old to request spare parts for a frequency counter he was building. 

That summer, the future Apple co-founder ended up with a summer job at Hewlett-Packard, which Jobs credits as a product of his simple willingness to ask.