Childhood

As a child one thing I wanted to be at one point was a veterenarian but only for small animals.

I wanted to be a Police-woman but they said I had flat feet I did manage an Investigation Firm in the end for 4 years, so I guess I kinda did it.

One thing was for me sure - I never wanted to teach.
I moved abroad and worked in a travelangency - from there to another country worked for a Swedish firm - moved again and again and ended up as a housewife, started helping kids with their homework and getting paid, then eveningclasses and private students and working for a language school. So by the time others get into early retirement I started a very interesting time teaching and really like it. But of course one cannot compare teaching in a school and have private students in intensive courses.

I also wanted to be a vet, but a wildlife vet. I also wound up being a teacher, but of the classroom variety. I didn't wind up as a housewife, though. Too many dangly bits in the wrong places. And a beard. Oh, and also no spouse. I think that's an important part of being a housewife, too.

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man...


i still spoke, understood and thought as a child, hopefully i always will

When you look a grown up man in the eyes and see the boy in him looking at you - then you know he is a nice man

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a teacher. Not because I wanted to teach but because I like writing on the blackboard and bossing people around.

When I got older, I realized that I was not cut out for teaching. At all. Whatsoever. I also realized that I could boss people around without being a teacher. I let go of the pleasure of writing on the blackboard. C'est la vie.

Hey, boss, what's your next demand?

At first, I wanted to be a commercial artist. When that did not seem to work for me, I decided to be a writer. That semi-works.

I wanted to drive transport trucks, mostly because all the truck drivers I knew smoked cigars and I wanted to smoke cigars.

I did work for two companies that insured commercial trucking, and was out on the highway in a transport ... but never on my own as the driver. I smoked cigars and those cute little wine-dipped cigarellos for a while in my early 20's.

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my mother saved a little essayish thing I wrote in grade 3 - I wanted to live on Carnaby Street in London, be a fashion designer and wear red velvet underwear.

where did I get these ideas?

I wanted to be a doctor from about age 11 or 12 on. I've from the generation just before the boomers, and when I was at university, few women were admitted to any medical school in the US, the data of which I saw in a Medical School listing book put out by the MCAT exam people, probably when I first looked at that, maybe 1962. Most US schools by far took exactly none, 1 or 2 the next most, up to about 6 in one or two schools. There was one medical school, maybe in Philadelphia, that was only for women. That all changed a little later in the civil rights era, but by then I didn't have either the grades or the money (worked a passel of hours a week and waited for and rode the buses another bunch of time). Also, I'm not all that smart in some subjects, eh. So I was a senior lab tech person for a lot of years, took art after work in much of that time, and ended up a painter and a landscape architect, which involved another four years of school, but I enjoyed those years a lot.

It's weird that I didn't really pay attention re who I was or am, with all that 'I wanna be a doctor' yearning. Partly I just plain liked science, but I also knew my father had to leave med school to take care of his mother, so that could have been stuck in my brain as a motive, liking and admiring him as I did. Also I was into helping people as a good thing to do, after reading a bunch of history of medicine books from the library. Still get helping people, but not in the huge way I felt back then.

Also weird: that I used to draw house plans in my simple way back when my parents were looking at houses to get away from our rental place, me aged 9-12. They looked for a house off and on over those years. Damn, I could have skipped a big wad of years and just gone into architecture and landscape architecture. I'd have likely been interested drawing and painting too..
But I'm glad I got a pocketfull of all those subjects.

I wanted to be a vet for a while (I forget which particular while timing) but that got to be ridiculous when I started sneezing as a pastime. I started sneezing, best I can remember, in Hayne's Hall, a sort of decrepit part of the university at the time. It was also around the time I got contact lenses, not likely a cause, and around the time I started smoking. Later I hied myself to an allergist for testing and was positive for 64 things. Huh, dogs and cats among them. Guinea pigs too, as I found out later. I got shots for a few years, with some mildish success.

How did I know drawing house plans was a thing to do? I'm sure my dad must have told me people did that - I remember he was a pretty good carpenter. Still have a bookshelf he built for me.

I could hit a baseball very far and fantasized at being a major league player.
Only problem - I couldn't hit it very often.
Then I thought that since I liked to blow things up, I should be a chemist. I did well on the exams, but somehow managed to get expelled from the lab.
Then I decided to put my skill for prevarication to work in a sales career.
Ka-Ching

Haha.. Sorry that just made me laugh, neologist.

All these Teachers/Nurses/Vets.. Caring people. No, I wanted to be a movie start, rich and stuff

I remember my Mother, telling me that I should or had to become a receptionist, marry a brick layer.

I'm such a rebel!!!

I was thinking much the same.

All those people with career plans when I was about accessories - cigars and red velvet underwear.

Must be the twin thing

One of my strong memories of my mother was her adamant insistence that I learn how to type. My fourteenth summer was whiled away with going to the grocery store with my mother and aunt, the laundramat with my mother and aunt, the Slenderella Salon with my mother and aunt (essentially chaise lounges that jiggled), and visiting cousins every two weeks; combing through my aunt's button collection (we lived there when we first moved back to california), reading Zane Grey novels (my late uncle's and there was some tiny bit of sex in them, which I was curious about) and Dickens, and spending many many hours learning how to touch type on my mother's Underwood set on my aunt's dining room table.

(My mother was a secretary at RKO in the mid-30's)

You did end up being a star, and same with ehBeth, both of you smart.

Brick layer? Are they still around? I haven't seen any in our *neck of the woods for decades. *Silicon Valley.