What I Want To Be When I Grow Up

Oh the joys of being a kid.  Life was easy back then, even though at the time it didn't always seem that way.  But reflecting back.....yes, it was easy.  There are no huge expectations of a child.  When they are really little, its put your toys away and don't delay.  Cooking dinner.....nope, Mom too care of that.  Paying the mortgage.....nope, Dad took care of that.  Laundry.......nope, thanks again Mom.  Finally a little responsibility in the form of chores crept in.......hello to cleaning dirty dishes, cleaning my room, mowing the lawn, and taking out the garbage.  Now at the time, they were not the most pleasurable things to do for a kid.  That meant that I had to pause my video game......provided to me by Mom and Dad.  Mom and Dad even made it really easy for me to occupy my time by sending me to school, may as well since they were paying the taxes that funded the school.  School presented itself with other challenges.  There was a constant barrage of questions that they wanted answered.  "How do you spell cat, C-A-T"  Check.  "Whats 1 + 1, 2."  Check, got that too.  Okay, what's next?  "What do you want to be when you grow up?"  Uh oh.  Not quite sure about that one but the other kids responses of being a firefighter, policeman, doctor, astronaut, and pro basketball player all seemed like pretty good responses to me.  Sure, I'll be a ___________ (insert admirable occupation here).  All pretty easy back then.  You could do whatever you wanted and the adults were excited and supportive about it.

So now we fast forward to adulthood.  I can still spell cat and 1 + 1 still equals 2.  I answered those a long time ago and the answers are still the same.  As for the "what do you wanna be when you grow up," oh shit, I forgot to answer that one.  Well.....time to think about that, but this time as an adult who has had some life experiences and is even smart enough to spell mercurial and know the definition too.  I just learned that word and am halfway though grad school.  Lets look at some different careers and see if I want to do one of those.

1.  Doctor - Great, you get to help sick people get better.  That was the impression given to me when I was a kid.  The older, more educated me knows that this just isn't the case.  To be a doctor these days means that you get to help the sick, but only under the supervision of the insurance companies and the Big Pharma.  And hopefully you, the doctor, can accurately diagnose the patient within the 4 minutes in which they are allotted in the exam room and only hope that the patient hasn't forgotten what it was that they were there for in the first place because of their 45 minute wait in the waiting room and then again in the exam room.  After corralling all the patients through for processing, the doctors can only hope to make enough money to pay for their malpractice insurance and their student loans which they maxed out in med school in order to live.  Be a doctor?  I'll pass on that.  Never was a fan of gushing blood.  If I was forced, I would consider being a chiropractor, no needles or drugs needed.  Jesus healed with his hands didn't he?

2.  Banking - Alright banking!  Now I get to work with other people's money.  And in doing so, try and squeeze every penny out of them that I can get.  Sure there are legitimate banking needs such as mortgages, savings accounts and different investment vehicles, but what common folk can read the fine print?  Whereas what the big print giveth, the small print will surely taketh away.  Beyond that, you have to worry about the guys in the really nice suits sitting in their offices sipping on scotch and bullshitting about where they are going to play golf next.  My natural assumption is that they have these conversations to clear their minds from the fact that in their quest for every penny, they lost all the pennies that we invested with them......they still have their own pennies......paid in the form of government bailout bonuses.  What better way to reward success?  Be a banker?  A Monday through Friday 9 to 5er would be pretty nice.  Then I would get to take off for every holiday with the government workers.  Speaking of government.........

3.  Politician - Making decisions that affect the lives of others.  Whoa!  That's a tall order to take on.  But ya know what, I could probably see myself doing that.  I could be the voice of the people and lead us into prosperity.  First I need votes though.....and a tooth whitening treatment.  But soon realization would set in that I'm not part of the club.  I didn't kiss enough ass or perform enough favors to the benefit of a few and the detriment of millions.  Be a politician?  Maybe I'm still a little bitter about losing my high school class presidency (they said I lost by 1 vote) but I'll skip that.

4.  Policeman - Give me a badge and a gun!  Time to serve and protect......and work overtime security detail at the church festival.....and pull traffic duty for road construction projects....and answer false burglary alarms from local businesses.  I wanna come back to the police station saying "book 'em Danno!"  Don't get me wrong here now, I believe that law enforcement is a very noble and necessary cause but who wants to babysit the public....and risk their life in the process?  Dealing with drunks, car accidents, and domestic disputes isn't the quite my idea of fighting crime.  Sure the retirement and benefits are good but they better be because I'd be the only one on the roads at night when drunk Johnnie decided to send a text message and eat a cheeseburger while swerving left of center as I passed.  Be a cop?  Not so much.

5.  Management - An office with a nice window view overlooking the city skyline as I toil away on conference calls and making big important business decisions because .  Now hold up here...this doesn't sound like the management I know.  The management I know is much like that of a policeman but in a business environment.  You're the guy everyone calls when they have a problem.  Dramatic bullshit from the employees, bitchy customers, the broken whatever, an asshole boss, and covering for the slack of others...these are the issues to be had.  Overworked and underpaid, doesn't really seem to balance in my mind.  I think what I'm looking for is upper management.  Making sure that Betty Sue gets her lunch break is the last thing that I want to have to be worried about.....from the looks of her she doesn't seem to have a problem finding the time to eat anyway.  Line management?  Eeehhh.

Well, so far I've come up with 5 different jobs and nothing sounds appealing.  Will I ever find something appealing?  Oh I'm positive of that.....that's what my horoscope said anyway.  Sometimes you have to sift through a lot of the muck to find something good, something honest, something rewarding.  Thomas Edison saw the positive side of failure when he said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10000 ways that won't work."  I still may not know exactly what I want to be when I grow up, but I know a lot of things I don't.