When I was but a wee lad, I wanted to be an astronaut. As a teen I wanted to be a famous rock-n-roll guitarist. Actually I’m not sure I ever formally gave up that goal, but at some point I ended up married with kids & a career. Nowadays, if I found a want-ad reading “Rock-n-Roll Guitarist wanted - fame & fortune guaranteed!” I’d have to turn it down.
Kinda sad, that…
Oh well, at least I’m getting the bills paid. And when one of my boys decides to be a famous rock-n-roll guitarist, I’ll live vicariously through them
floats their teeth? it means rasping the rough edges off the horse’s back teeth with a big ole nail file type appliance. Not all horses need to have it done tho’, mine didn’t in the 2 years I had her.
In my childhood I wanted to be a dancer, but I grew too tall… or a singer, but I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.
In my teens I wanted to be a showjumper, but a horse threw me and I lost my nerve and to this day still can’t jump anything higher than about 2ft.
Basically it is filing. The vet uses a power-filer (a Makita if I am not mistaken) to smooth the surface of the tooth. Uneven wear makes pointy edges that can cause mouth sores. It produces a lot of saliva and the one of the most godawful smells I’ve ever beheld, and I’ve beheld a lot.
I wanted to be a doctor and a writer. Later I wanted to be an actress.
Today, I’m sitting in my office of a nonprofit community foundation, working with nonprofit organizations who apply to use for funding. I’m not involved in medicine (although, for a period of my life, I was a Medical Assistant, which cured me of any notion about taking up medicine as a career). I’m also not a professional writer, although I’ve had a thing (small time) published here or there, and won a prize or two for something I’ve written. I still think of writing as something I’ll do “one of these days”.
I didn’t finish college until I was in my early 30’s, but seven years later, I’m preparing to return. It seems that I’d really like to each middle/high school English.
So, I know what I want to be when I grow up, but I keep changing my mind.
Through one of the most circuitous journeys imaginable, I have finally reached the point of doing what I always wanted to do when I grew up. Funny, I still don’t feel like I actually have grown up though.
Since about the age of 11 or 12, I wanted to be a teacher.
Such that, I would actually play “teacher” with my younger brother who would grudgingly play along as the student. I would teach a lesson, come up with a little work sheet which he would do and I would then grade it.
Well it was better than sitting around and watching TV all day.
A few decades later and here I am still playing teacher, coming up with little activities and work sheets for my students and then grading them --one aspect that may have lost its charm but that naturally goes with the territory.
No regrets. I’d do it all over again in the exact same way.
Well maybe a couple of minor changes here and there but really, everything turned out just the way I wanted it to.
I never had any dreams when I was growing up. My father worked a desk job he hated and mom stayed home. I may have had some assumption that I would get married and have kids so to the extent that’s true, no I’m not that. I had an obligation to become well-educated but beyond that I don’t know. But I wasn’t taught to dream about what I could be and survival is all you can hope for. That’s still the way I feel for the most part.
However, I do have the kind of life I imagined, in terms of things that are not career-oriented, per se. Like having a life of relative ease and comfort, with lots of dogs, and being able to buy my own toys.
Well what I wanted to be changed a bit from year to year. For a while my brother and I were “training” to be stunt people in the movies, but I think that was more of an excuse to push each other down the stairs. I also used to practice what I would say when I accept my Oscar. My favorite little spiteful kid memory was whenever my Mom would punish me I would just think to myself, “Well I am not going to thank you when I get my Oscar” and then I would give a smug smile and all was well.
Then I went through a phase where all I wanted to do was work with animals.
Now I am working in theatre. I work behind the scenes and never venture to film, so well my Oscar dreams are dashed, but I guess it is related.
I don’t recall thinking much about it until I was in my teens. Then, I saw the first Nebula Awards Anthology and read about SFWA. That’s what I wanted to be: a science fiction writer.
Way back when growing up, I wanted to be a cop. It was impressed into me at a young age that, “no, what you really meant to say is that you want to be is a lawyer.” My guidance tests said I’d be an exact match for an airline pilot.
I tried the lawyer thing all through school. Went as far as the LSAT, which I passed with a decent grade. Then I looked at all the people who were in classes around me, and I said to myself, “Self…all these people sitting in desks around you…every one of them is a cut-throat Asshole. There isn’t one nice person or one shining spark of humanity in any one of your classes anymore. Your professors are becomong less-and-less teachers and more-and-more Political Hacks. You don’t want to be one of those, do you? Or have to deal with them for, say, the rest of your life?”
I went into the business world, but I found that my strong ethical convictions held me back time and time again in the private sector.
Ironically, if I’d had become a cop, I’d be retired by now on half-pay for the rest of my life. Or I’d be dead. Either way, I couldn’t complain.
I never had a specific idea in mind of what I wanted to be. All I knew was that I did not want to do manuel labor. Mt dad was a roofer and everyone summer I’d have to go to work with him and I hated being out in the heat lugging heavy bundles of shingles around.
So now I have a boring IT job but it’s inside and there is air-conditioning. I make enough money to live comfortably and buy toys for myself now and again. I just bought myself one of those ForceFX lightsaber’s that glow and make sounds. Lemme tell you after 3 shots of vodka I was having a blast in my living room with the lights off.
In high school, when I wasn’t thinking about being a non-virgin, I was into being a nature lover/wanderer/mystic and a rock musician. By college I had it whittled down to I want to have a recording studio in my country house and I would have my morning coffee and go to my studio and make music that people would have religious experiences to or take a walk in the woods or whatever.
I never had the work ethic nor the songwriting chops required to get to that point as a musician, though.
So…I have my little studio in my little country house in the woods that I like to explore. But I have to work an office job to pay for it. I can cobble together this or that little piece of music when my kids are occupied and I can steal a few moments, but I just don’t have those big chunks of time I need to really get into it these days. I’ll survive, though.
