A doctor, a lawyer, a USAF officer, a pro wrestler, an astronomer, a historian, an anthropologist, a naval officer, a consultant for Star Trek, and/or middle management.
Not all at once though. That’d be pretty tiring.
No idea how that happened. I’m pretty sure I hit “submit” only once. Of course, I could have been musing on what happens to the kryptonian influenza virus when it’s altered by red kryptonite, and whether or not the resultant virus would be covered by this year’s kryptonian flu vaccine (available in convenient nasal spray if the patient doesn’t happen to be under a red sun at immunization time) and got distracted into posting twice. You never know.
Race car driver. My dad drove race cars in the 50’s and I got a chance to drive quarter midgets when I was 8. After getting out of the Navy I jumped in feet first and started driving race cars. After 10 years of busting my butt, I realized I wasn’t going to make the big time. I wasn’t for lack of desire, a combination of lack of time, money, and talent finally convince me to hang up the nomex. I still think under the right circumstances and opportunity, I could have made a living at it. And I got to race against some guys that have made a splash at the national level such as Greg Biffle, Ron Hornaday and Chad Little. I still race on line against folks from all over the world now and the racing can be quite competitive. My wheel and pedals cost me almost $400.
When I was 5,6,7, I wanted to be an artist. When I was 8.9. 10 I wanted to be an architect.
When I was 14, someone let me hold a 16mm Arriflex movie camera for all of…oh gosh, no more than 10 minutes. That was it. I wanted to not only make movies, but be a cameraman.
I’m 42. I’m a professional cameraman. Got my first paying job as one when I was 18. Aside from one atrocious 9 month period of time, I’ve never looked away from that career. It’s clearly what drives me.
Cartooniverse
Kindergarten: I knew my destiny was to be a paleontologist.
Mid- to late-grade school: Astronaut!
Seriously, I had it all planned. I was going to ge ta PhD in astrophysics and go from there. So I ended up taking one term of physics chemistry and biochemistry at Harvard… then I met an astrophysicist. She was the dullest human I have ever met (I have since met other astrophysicists who are indeed quite thoroughly interesting, but at the time…) it burst my bubble. I lost my passion for it.
But I’ve always been very artistically inclined so I have other irons in the fire…
Besides, when the aliens come, I’ ll still get into space!
Oh, and to emphasize how sure I was I was going to be an astronaut…
I have the Space Shuttle Operator’s Manual at home. :o
What would be really weird is if only one of them was identical.
Me, I wanted to be independently wealthy.
Doctor, non-Kryptonian variety.
Psychobunny, M.D.
I was very focused from a child.
I wanted to be Zorro, and an archaeologist. I saw no cogent reason the two things couldn’t be combined.
Note I didn’t want to date or marry Zorro; I wanted to be Zorro. What better bliss than to ride a horse, wear a cape and mask, help people and stab bad guys? My poor parents. Other girls wanted Barbie dolls; I wanted a sword. (Since I was a complet klutz from a child, they quite wisely didn’t give me one.)
And I wanted to dig things up. My father was an enthusiastic amateur fossil hunter, so we spent many a wonderful afternoon grubbing around for delightfully creepy looking prehistoric things that were conveniently turned to rock and therefore no longer actually crawling. I still have some geodes and trilobites around that we dug up, as well as a few very faded scars from sliding down rock faces. Did I mention I was a klutz?
I pursued the anthropology course through a master’s degree before realizing that I wasn’t cut out for cut-throat academic politics. So now I’m a public librarian…and a city department head. And happy with it. Go figure.
Still no sword, though.
A baller.
When I was in elementary school I wanted to be a teacher. After sixth grade or so I wanted to be a writer. In college I discovered a latent love of science fiction, and decided that’s what I wanted to write.
I’m still working on both goals–I sold my first story a few weeks ago, and I’m in graduate school, with an eventual goal to teach college-level writing/English classes.
RealityChuck, what kind of SF do you write?