In Kindergarten, my mom could entertain me for hours by giving me a dust rag and a bottle of Pledge. I’d lovingly wipe every crevice of our piano and every surface of every tabletop in the house. (Looking back, I was probably getting high from the fumes.)
“I want to be a maid when I grow up,” I told my mom. When she told me I’d definitely change my mind, I sullenly cleaned her dresser.
In fourth grade, my class arranged a field trip to some phosphate mines in central Florida. The night before the trip, I carefully put together my outfit. A wide-brimmed hat, a flannel shirt, sturdy jeans and sneakers. I barely slept, too excited over the prospect of dinosaur bones and giant shark teeth.
I wanted to be an archeologist. Just like Indiana Jones.
For the only time ever, my dad came along as the field trip parent. When our bus stopped for lunch, he taught me out to put pennies on a train track to get flattened. When we arrived at the pits, I spent all day sifting through chalky rocks to find ancient manatee ribs and pieces of huge fossilized teeth. That night, I filled a memory box with my treasures. I kept it beside my bed.
It took a few years for me to figure out that archeologists didn’t fight Nazis or fly airplanes.
So I decided I’d be a marine biologist instead. I liked fishing and sea creatures and the beach.
Then I figured out that marine biologists had to study biology. I hated science.
So I decided I’d be a journalist. Or a teacher. Except I hated the news and I didn’t like teenagers.
Now that I’m sort of grown up and I’m a writer, I can be any of these things. I can be a Nazi-fighting marine biologist who moonlights as a journalist and spends weekends teaching karate to maids.
And that’s pretty cool.
This may or may not be related:
