When I Grow Up To Be A Man
I have always known what I wanted to be when I grew up.
When I was five, I wanted to be a paleontologist. I couldn’t pronounce the word (I’m not sure I even can today), but I knew that I wanted to discover dinosaurs for a living.
It was my heart’s desire to chart and list the varieties of the great thunder lizard. I bought books on the subject, collected plastic models and filled my head with countless possible recipes for cooking brontosaurus eggs in preparation for a lifetime of dino-hunting.
But then it happened.
One day, I was told that dinosaurs were, in fact, extinct. It seems that they had been for quite some time now. My fantasy of having a pet triceratops disappeared along with any future plans of playing with fossils. What was the use of studying dinosaurs if I would never get to meet one — and then subsequently eat it?
When I was six, I wanted to be a ghostbuster.
I didn’t care if modern science and my teachers told me that there were no such things as ghosts, I would spend my life proving these naysayers wrong by discovering spirits and then busting them.
I had daydreams of an adulthood spent traveling the country discovering the unknown … and then destroying it. I would encounter monsters big and small, prove their existence to a previously skeptical world and then wipe them off the face of the earth with high powered proton beams, crucifixes or silver bullets.
But as attractive as my idea seemed, there were still lingering doubts that plagued my mind.
What if I spent my life looking for ghosts in vain? What if I did find a ghost? What if the ghost was really scary? What if I peed my pants?
What finally deterred me from my grand ambition of ghostbusting was not fear, though, it was the empathy I developed as I grew older. No longer feeling the drive to eat or kill everything I perceived as a threat, I put myself in the ghost’s shoes. Did I really want to take these poltergeists away from their unfinished business on Earth and lock them up in an ecto-container for the rest of their afterlife?
That didn’t seem very nice at all.
I decided that the dead had the same rights to afterlife, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Every subsequent year, I flirted with a new future profession. During the course of my childhood, I considered being everything from a FBI agent to a secret service agent, an artist to a history teacher, a costumed vigilante to an investigative reporter.
It may not seem like I had any real grasp on my future back then — I was changing my mind more then I changed my underwear. The thing is, when I locked onto an idea of what I wanted to do with my life, I locked on with the strength of a pit bull.
When I decided I wanted to be a secret service agent, I was sure that one day I would take a bullet for the president. There was not a question in my mind. I had already started researching which part of my body would be the best to absorb gunfire.
When I was in high school and visions of filmmaking danced through my mind like celluloid sugarplums, I had no doubt in my head that one day I would be a hot shot movie director. I knew for a fact that the day would come where I would have to give an award speech so I started working on it between studying for finals.
Now things are different. I’m not sure what I want to be when I grow up. The funny part, though, is that to the world at large, I’m pretty damn close to being a grown-up already.
I have a full-time job in an office. I own a suit with a matching tie. I brush my teeth and comb my hair.
Sure there a few things missing from my life that separates me from being a full-fledged, due-paying member of the real world, but sometimes I feel that I’ve already grown up and I’m not any closer to knowing what I want to be. I’m not living a life of adventure or excitement on a daily basis. I don’t have a pet dinosaur or an arch-nemesis. I do not have anything near the life I thought I would be living five or ten years ago.
Does that mean I’ve failed? Have I missed the mark and become something I’m not supposed to be? Or was I way off as a child? Were my hopes and ambitions wildly inappropriate and illogical?
I like to think the answer lies elsewhere. I like to think that I’m just not done growing up. I haven’t reached my final destination. I may be going to a steady job with steady hours and I may find myself paying bills and taxes, but I’m still in the process of growing up.
Who knows what I’ll be when I get to the end of my youth. Hopefully, it will involve dinosaurs.
