When I Grow Up...

“When I grow up I want to be a little boy.” Joseph Heller

I recently noticed something about myself. I don't generally ask kids what they want to be when they grow up. Sometimes I find myself seeing them as one thing or another in the years to come. For example, I have a very smart kid in my class. Several months ago, I told him that I thought that he was so smart that he could easily grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer. He told me that he wanted to be a chef, because he wants to open a restaurant of authentic Guatemalan food so that everyone would know how good it is. Last year, I said the same thing to one of the girls in my class, also super smart. She told me that she wanted to be a secretary. This surprised me... her reason being that she would get to use a computer and wear high heels. I'm so proud of these kids.

I remember being a kid and having people ask me what I wanted to be... this was a loaded question for me. I always thought that life was such a long time that I might be able to do lots of things and live in lots of places. Today, I wrote some of these things down, the things that I really remember being interested in.

I wanted to be:
~an astronaut... because I loved the movie 'Space Camp' and thought it would be cool to see the Earth from space.
~a pilot... because I thought it would be cool to fly.
~a veterinarian... because every kid wants to be on at some point.
~a librarian... because my second mom was one, and I really loved books (and still do).
~a prosecuter... because I wanted to put away bad guys.
~a writer... because I loved to write poetry, and now writing is one of my favorite things to do.
~a social worker... because I know how hard it is to grow-up in a disfunctional home.
~a boxer... because I'm intrigued by the sport.
~a travel writer... because I love to travel and to write.
~a food critic... because I love to try new things.
~a truck driver... because I love a roadtrip.
~a chiropractor... because I believe that the body is capable of healing itself when properly aligned.
~a mom... because I thought that it was what I was supposed to want.

I wonder if everyone does this... or if they know exactly what they want to do for the rest of their lives. For the last few years, I wanted to live in a foreign country in an impoverished community. I have spent the last nineteen months doing just that... and I have loved just about every moment of it. What a cool thing that I got to do when I chose to actually do what I WANTED to do instead of what I was 'supposed' to do.

To be honest, I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. Sometimes this makes me feel like a failure, because I feel like I'm procrastinating the inevitable. Most days, I am very thankful that I don't have a "normal" life.