When I Grow Up

What did you want to be when you grew up? Was there one thing you had your heart set on? Did it turn out? Are you doing that now?

We were asked that question in third grade and we were supposed to answer by drawing pictures. Most of the kids drew one picture: A fireman, a policeman, a dog catcher, etc. I drew five or six different pictures. I couldn't decide on just one thing. It wasn't even like most children who want to be something for awhile and then switch. I couldn't pick one and stick with it even for a few weeks. I decided I wanted to be a drifter who hitchhiked from town to town, picking up a different job everytime I stopped, then pulling up stakes and moving on. I wanted to do it all. I wanted to write, draw, and teach for a living. I wanted to design aircraft until I found out how much math I would need. I wanted to be a racecar driver, an undercover cop, an underwater photographer or underwater welder. I wanted to be a rockstar. At one time, perish the thought, I even wanted to be a lawyer. Wow. A lawyer.

I'm still looking. I'm 36 years old and I don't know what to do when I grow up. In my quest to do everything, I've done nothing. In an earlier age, I might have been da Vinci. A rennaissance man. But television programs sucker-punched me and turned me into an amorphous, minute-attention-spanned, blob. Where would da Vinci be if he had had to schedule his life around "Friends"? That may be why people are so specialized these days. You can have many irons in the fire if you're not distracted by frivolity. As it is now, distractions lie, waiting to pounce, around every corner. So we're doing great if we can focus most of our attention on one thing.

I try to nurture in my children a desire to do something meaningful with their lives, whatever that be. My middle boy has wanted to be a chef since he was 2 or 3. We bought him a toy kitchen. By the way, why don't they make those for boys? They're all obviously for little girls. I do much of the cooking in my house. Just look at the famous chefs around. They're mostly men. Of the 53 chefs on this list, only 17 are women. I'm seeing more and more men cooking for their families. If I went home from work and said, "What's for dinner?" my wife would throw a frying pan at my head. It's not a gender-specific profession. By exclusively putting pink plastic kitchens in the toy stores with dolls and pretty flowers and other "girlie" things on them, the toy industry is saying that it's woman's work. Anyway, so we talked a lot about cooking to our middle boy. I showed him how to make a few things and he seemed really excited. My oldest has wanted to be a fireman since he could talk. So we got videos on firemen and firetrucks for him. Both of those have waned a little lately. Whatever comes up in the future, we'll support them all the way.