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Drink some Coors beer. I watched Smokey and the Bandit far too many times.
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Go to a major league baseball game. My dad would rather put a gun to his head than go to a baseball game.
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Become a stockbroker. My dad used to get the Wall Street Journal and I started reading it in 9th grade. I used to think I was cool watching the McNeil/Lehrer Newshour followed by the Nightly Business Report on PBS. Of course, I’d watch Wall $treet Week every week as well.
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Visit the (American) West. I was always fascinated with those square states out west. I loved watching Pac 8 football. Time zones intrigued me. How can it be 3 hours earlier out there? Is there really a desert out there? With cactus and everything? What does LA really look like? Are the freeways just like they are on CHiPS?
Meet my soul mate and the love of my life and have a long, happy relationship. It was the normal girly-girl dream, but I never could have seriously imagined it would actually happen.
Have a home theater. I used to read of movie moguls and stars who would have screenings in their homes. The very thought was magical to me. Now, even though I’m a normal person, I can do it too. Not that we ever use the home theater because we still go out to the theater all the time, but it’s there if I want to watch any of the 1500+ movies available at a moment’s notice.
Travel. I’ve been to 48 of the 50 states (no Alaska or Hawaii yet), Canada several times, Mexico twice, and England twice. That’s not everywhere I want to go (pining for New Zealand) but more than I would have guessed.
This is going to sound kind of odd but…
Buy whatever I want at the grocery store. As a child, I was obsessed with food. Sadly, my mother was ahead of the curve nutrition-wise, and there was never any pudding, soda, or candy bars in our house. I used to fantasize about having a magic box that could produce any food I wished.
The moment that brought home to me for the first time that I was an adult was walking through the grocery store and realizing that, yes, I CAN buy that chocolate pudding, and NO ONE can stop me! Muahahaha!
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Own a horse.
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Eat what I want, when I want (Pyper, I am so with you on this one),
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Go to bed when I want to.
I always wanted to be a published science fiction writer. I remember seeing the first Nebula anthology and reading about SFWA and thinking, “Man, I’d like to be a part of that.”
Climb mountains.
I’ve hiked a lot as an adult and summitted a few big peaks. I do at least one backpacking trip a summer. I’ve traveled around the west to Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, the Grand Canyon and lots of National forests.
Surf. Last month I went to Bali for a couple weeks. I spent a couple days on Kuta beach learning to surf. It only took an hour before I was surfing the breakers, and the second day I was riding real waves. Just small waves, but I was still surfing.
Drive a full-sized pick up truck It’s in the driveway now.
Be a soldier I did an enlistment right out of high school.
Ride a motorcycle I rode one while I was in the Army and owned a couple since then.
I still haven’t flown an airplane or a spaceship.
Get married in a big white dress and go on a kickass beach honeymoon.
Live in a big city (done this twice–Chicago and NYC).
See California.
Sit in a DeLorean (though I still don’t own one).
Own a Tiffany lamp. (I have three!!! I always thought they were the sweetest home accessory ever, like having stained glass windows just sitting around.)
Oh, and kiss a boy. I was a bit of a late bloomer there.
Drive really cool cars, like TransAms, Mustangs, etc. And do burnouts!
Visit Legoland.
Screw.
duh
Travel. To lots of places. Without my parents!
Work with computers.
Put play before work occasionally (but don’t tell anybody, it’s a secret!)
Play in a rock n roll band and put out an album. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, but that’s a good thing, actually, in some ways.
Keep the cats that “followed me home”.
Eat frosting out of the can with a spoon.
Go outside alone in the middle of the night.
Publish books.
Get laid.
I’ve done each, several times.
Own all the books I want. All I had was the library where I could read them but couldn’t keep them.
To me, owning books and being able to reread them represents unlimited wealth.
See the pyramids of Egypt. Done.
See Victoria Falls. Done.
Go to Disneyland. Done.
Travel throughout the universe…sigh…
How could I forget…
I got a BB gun and – gasp – shot it.
Work on a puppet TV show. That was a really unexpected one to have happen.
Create computer graphics. That just needed money and software development - i.e. with enough time passing, eventually it was going to happen.
Draw a comic strip and get it published. That one wasn’t quite how I envisaged it, but it was good enough to satiate my dream.
Work on a porn shoot. I never expected that one to ever come true; it was just an idle thought that somehow ended up happening.
Have a complete collection of my favourite fantasy movies. Hurray for the invention of DVD!
There are plenty of other dreams I had as a kid that haven’t yet come true, but they are not completely out of reach. They may still happen.
Have a horse and live over their barn.
Find my soulmate and marry him.
Live to see 30 [I was convinced for a long time that since I didn’t have any plans as to what I wanted to do with my life that I was going to die before I was 30]
Childhood goals achieved as an adult, in no particular order:
Be a railroad crewman. I wanted to be the engineer; primarily worked as a brakeman, but I have operated locomotives. All on a tourist railroad.
Witness a trainwreck. It was minor, and rather anticlimactic.
Work for NASA
Be a fireman
Move to the Old South. I now live in North Carolina.
See the Dismal Swamp. I live in it…
Fly a hot air balloon
Save a life (several times now)
Another one for ‘work with computers’
See a tornado in action
Have a kid
Overcome my Charlie Brown insecurities (well, mostly)