I fear I may have recently shot myself in the foot, as the saying goes, and it was bad timing all around as I had only just inserted my foot into my mouth. FAIL. I think it’s because I grew up being asked what I wanted to be when I grew up instead of the far more important HOW DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP? Consequently, I have a fear of ubiquitous questions, and have learned to answer A DOCTOR every time the real answer might erase the hopeful look off of the inquisitive face.
Once I said, ‘I don’t know. I just want to be happy.’
“HAPPY WON’T BUY A HOME”
“AN ASTRONAUT! NO, NO, I MEAN A DOCTOR!”
Talk is cheap, apparently, but bluster pays the mortgage.
Totally unrelated, there are three cans of diet coke on my desk, and each one is about ¼ full.
I have begun to walk lately as though my steps are a cascade of imminent falling, and I always seem to need something to lean on when I stop, a fence post or a tree, and in the open field I have no choice but to crouch low to the ground and am subsequently intimate with all the nameless knees in my neck of the woods. It is easy on my feet, but an invitation to unwanted questions. Some people don't get any attention as children and need it desperately as adults. Some get the wrong kind when younger and want nothing to do with it when older. It has taken me awhile to learn these are not the same things. But I resist standing up simply to make a point.
But the next thing you know, I am on the opposite end of the questioning, the end that supposedly has all the answers.
“What do you want me to be when I grow up?” he asks me.
“I just want you to be happy.”
“Well, I want to be a scientist.”
Maybe these sorts of things skip a generation.
11 comments:
Well, I hope he becomes a happy scientist.
me, too.
although there will be more money if he's mad.
Probably makes the most sense to ask our kids what they want us to be when we grow up. I hope my kids says happy, but it will likely be unsoiled.
ooh, you're absolutely right. probably not a good idea to tell them you want to be Pampered.
I don't know what you're mixing with the diet coke (please tell me you're not drinking diet coke on its own), but the mix is either really weak or the cup/mug/stein/boot you're using isn't big enough. My recommendation: Drink your liquor straight, the way God intended, without the defiling tang of the carbonated beverage.
I never wanted to be an astronaut, and I remember feeling guilty because I thought outer space was a sham, or at the very most, boring. Remembering this now, it makes more sense why I eventually abandoned Science in college and adopted English Lit.
I love that I have some of my profoundest thoughts while commenting on others' sites. It's fitting, somehow.
I once told my aunt that I wanted to be happy when I grew up. She just snorted and said good luck, that won't happen. I'm just now beginning to unlearn that one.
Bitch.
sir, don't bad mouth diet coke! it is the gateway drug that eventually led me to spanish coffee.
kerri anne, i think a lot of parents want their children to become astronauts because in space, no one can hear you scream.
steph, next time she says that you should play Happiness is a Warm Gun and start twitching.
What do scientists do nowdays, anyway? I mean, the genome project is essentially complete, gravity is pretty much indisputable, and we've got vaccinations for everything, even for cancer now.... I'm just not sure that there's going to be much left for scientists to do by the time he's old enough, y'know? Maybe he should try counseling. Because you KNOW there will always be crazy people.
"...and in the open field I have no choice but to crouch low to the ground and am subsequently intimate with all the nameless knees in my neck of the woods. It is easy on my feet, but an invitation to unwanted questions."
Aren't the unwanted questions usually the only ones worth asking? Or was that unanswered? I can never remember.
my 13yo daughter is very specific, "I want to be a rocket scientist."
You can argue with her all day long but she always sticks to her guns... er, rockets.
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