"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

By Helen Bansen on October 17, 2012

I know this question isn’t asked much in college.  But the other day, I was talking to a very precocious three year old little boy, and he looked up at me and asked me three questions.

  1. How old are you?
  2. Are you a mommy?
  3. What do you want to be when you grow up?

The funny thing is, though the first two questions were fairly simple to answer, the last one was not.  I answered “18,” “no,” and “um… I’ll have to get back to you on that.”  It wasn’t so much that I didn’t know what I wanted; it was that I didn’t know what to say about it.  See, I always had a clear view as a kid of what I wanted to do with my ever elusive grownup life.  I was going to be a teacher-ballerina-chef-artist-writer-astronaut-firefighter.  And I might spend some time being a nurse too, I just didn’t know if I could fit that in between grand jetes and rescuing people’s pets from burning buildings.  It morphed a bit as I aged.  I quickly discovered I was afraid of heights (a fear that has increased with age, I now have trouble standing on tables) and terrified of space or plane travel.  As my bizarre anatomy (scoliosis) began to appear, being a dancer seemed more and more far-fetched; my legs are much too short to go shooting across the room, leaping grandly.  A quick jaunt as a nurse’s assistant to my mom, and I observed that witnessing other people’s blood and vomit makes me extremely uncomfortable and ill, and I’m far too easily distracted to be a chef.  So, what’s left?  Teacher-artist-writer.  Not so bad, is it?  I’ve already written something which I think is pretty impressive.  I write for all of you every week.  But is writing what I want to do?  (Not if I have to keep reading the dry, boring stuff for English class. No offense, Professors.)  That’s a tough thing to explain to a three year old.  It’s a tough thing to explain to an adult.

I remember that in 8th grade, we took an aptitude test to tell us what our best jobs would be in adulthood.  In my top ten were teacher, sign language interpreter, actor, and taxidermist.  Wait.  Hold it right there.  TAXIDERMIST?  What were they thinking?  That suggestion alone almost made me a vegetarian.  So, I learned to not listen to internet aptitude tests, lest I catch the spark of an idea to develop a taste for stuffed animals, real or otherwise.

After I chatted with the little boy, I found my mind wandering back to when I was a little girl.  It didn’t matter then where I was going to college or what my major was.  There were two questions then, your name and age.  Occasionally, people asked you your favorite color.  There’s something I rarely get asked now.  Now relationships are merely business propositions, as if we are networking with our friends in a future world where we all need each other’s phone numbers so we can ask for jobs and favors.  It seems that the only way I can avoid talking about college is to go to college.  It is also apparently the only way I can avoid my inevitable fate as a taxidermist.  Well, no one really knows what the future holds.

So, here’s the answer I would have given the little boy had I had the words for it:

I want to wake up every day and know that I will be going to spend my day with kids like you.  To teach them that there are ladies with short hair, and stars we cannot see until after they’ve already gone out.  I want to teach them to talk with their hands, to make things with their imaginations, and to look with their hearts.  I want them to be able to go out in the world and show humanity what lives inside of them, what lives inside us all.  I want the kids I teach to not explain what they want to be when they grow up, but rather who they want to be.  I don’t care if what they say doesn’t make any sense, or is enthusiastically long (firefighter-dancer-actor-singer-mom-teacher-police officer-mine-badwolf).  I just want them to find the someone that they want to be and work toward becoming it.  I want to spend every day writing stories for them, showing them how to grow things, and watching them work things out with the little cogs of their minds.

But that doesn’t really fit into the usual job description, so when adults ask, I say “preschool teacher.”  That doesn’t really fill it, does it?  It’s not the same as future-creator, life-maker, word-inventor.  I want to be able to let little kids change my life, and that’s not the same as teaching them.

I never want to stop learning, and this is how I want to do it.

So what about you?  What do you want to be when you grow up?  Or, will you even grow up?  Will you join me and never stop learning, or watching, or wanting?  Bill Clinton once said “when our memories outweigh our dreams, we become old.”  So the best anti-aging treatment is to never stop dreaming.  Don’t let go of the selves you used to be, but also don’t get caught up in them.  Nothing has ever looked, smelled, or tasted the way it does right now.  And it never will again.  So get out there and do whatever you can to avoid growing up.  Stay gold.

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