What did you want to be when you grew up?

[wabmester]

Anybody watch the documentary series Seven Up!

Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man.

 

[ScooterGuy]

I wanted to be a Scientist. I became one. Twelve years later, my field imploded, and evaporated. I finished my working life in the clinical version of my research field, which had morphed into an anti-Science stance. I hated it. What a downer. So, I FIREd. Now I'm a DINK on FIRE, and don't give a **** about my former field.

 

[REWahoo]

When I Grow Up, I Want To Wear A Bikini At Auto Shows
by Cindi Harris

...Everyone in my class wants to be a doctor or a lawyer or something stupid like that. That's because they're boring—or maybe because they know they wouldn't look good in a bikini. Well, I hate school, and there's no way I'm going to go to college for a million years. Ever since my mom and my mom's boyfriend took me to the Bryant County Expo Center, I've known exactly what my dream job is. I want a job where I can have fun, like the women from the Saleen auto-parts booth.

The women in bikinis were laughing and dancing, and everyone was talking to them because they were so glamorous—even people who didn't want a flyer. The woman in the pink bikini was my favorite, because her swimsuit matched her high heels. She gave me my very own Saleen Performance Parts & Accessories catalog to take home. I keep it in my backpack and pull it out during recess when no one will play with me.

When I first saw my older brother Keith's poster of the women wearing the Budweiser bikinis, I knew I wanted to do something glamorous, where there would be people whose only job was to put makeup on me and bring me different bikinis and tell me how great I look.

Why go to college when all I need to make money is a bikini? Of course, I'd want to have a whole lot of bikinis, so I could choose which one was best for the job. I'm sure Dad would get me some to start out with. He always buys me stuff, ever since he and Mom got divorced.

I'm not stupid or anything—I know I have to work my way up to beer posters. I'll probably have to start by wearing cutoffs and a halter top at the county fair and asking people to sign up to win a gas grill. But before you know it, I'll be handing out keychains in stadium parking lots. From there, the sky's the limit.

I'll always have a positive attitude. I'll have my picture taken with tons of guys, and I'll smile really big for all of them. I won't even mind if a guy rubs up against me weird, unless he makes me drop my flyers or undoes my bikini top. I'm totally going to keep in shape and learn how to walk in high heels as soon as I get boobs. And I'll talk to people and make them feel special and stuff. I just know that I can put people at ease and make them forget that they're fully dressed, and I'm in a bikini trying to get them to try Bacardi Silver.

It sucks that I have to be 18 to work in a bar. Keith once dated this girl Tammy who modeled lingerie in nightclubs. Guys were always asking her on dates and telling her how beautiful she was. She even had to be escorted to her car every night, just like a star. I know I'll work really hard and be totally professional. I won't drop a single drink, unless someone pushes me really hard. Even if someone at a boat show grabs my butt, I'll just smile and tell him, "That's not for sale. This outboard motor is, though."

I'm going to live at the beach and take off my top when I'm tanning, like they do in magazines. I'll have a huge beach house with a big stereo and a volleyball net out back. Of course, Jeremy Linder won't be invited. If he shows up, I'll call the cops and tell them I'm a bikini promotional girl and Jeremy is a creep, and they'll put him in jail until he apologizes for putting peanut butter in my hair in the third grade.

I can't wait till I make it big. Everyone in this town will see my poster or my liquor-store standee or my power-tool calendar. Mrs. Cobb will see my picture on the cover of Hot Rod Monthly and think, "I was wrong to doubt that Cindy would become a bikini model." Well, I hope she doesn't expect me to visit her after I make it, because I'll be way too busy doing sports-radio promotions and handing out Alabama Slammer shooters to even remember her name. - The Onion

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

Read a lot of Bob Heinlein's stuff (OK, all of it ). Pretty much always wanted to be an engineer. Didn't know what kind.

Liked chemistry, but found out how badly it paid. 2+2=4. ChE, like 2B. Great fun, when I get to do any. Most of the time I get paid heavy bread just to size pipes. Also sized sewers and city water lines, and written the dreaded 'paint specs', too. Idiots get to do the fun stuff and they do a really bad job. I console myself by crying all the way to the bank.

 

[CompoundInterestFan]

I never remember having a strong preference towards any one thing, but I think surf bum appealed highly to me. Either that or a writer. Or both. Of course, that was way before I learned what a boring, thankless job writing can be.

I was also big into role-playing games, so I had fanatasies about being a wizard. Is it too late to sign up for that?

 

[glock35ipsc]

I wanted to be a firefighter ever since I could remember.

Immediately after high school, I joined the fire department and spent 14 years as a volunteer firefighter (served in almost every position from firefighter, to company officer, to assistant fire chief), EMT-I, as well as a volunteer for the Sheriff's Department Emergency Services Unit (mountain rescue team, dive rescue team, and the wildland firefighting crew). I did get paid to fight wildland fires though, and I got to travel all over the country fighting fires for three weeks at a time. Good money too!

I have been involved in some highly publicized incidents that I will NEVER foget....from the great Fort Collins flood in 97, to the search for little Jared Atadero up the Poudre Canyon, recovering the body of a kayaker from a tunnel behind a water fall, and many many others. Funny, I never realized how easily I remembered the names of some of our victims until now.

When I was little, I always had one of those Radio Shack fire helmets (with the red light and siren on it) hanging on a hook in my room, along with a yellow rain coat and Dad's old rubber boots. Every now and then, the mood would strike and I would jump up out of my chair, run to my room and put on my "gear", run outside and jump on my bike, ride around the front yard, then grab the garden hose and start spraying everything in sight!

Heck, I will even draw a pension when I turn 55 from the fire department! It's only $350/month now, but they increase the amount about every other year, and whatever it is when I turn 55 is what I will be getting.

 

[Cut-Throat]

I still haven't decided for sure if I want to grow up. Once I've made that decision, I'll start working on what I want to be -- maybe a dragon . . . or a rainbow.

Me too! - The only thing I ever wanted to BE was a Fly Fisherman, and you usually have to pay to be one of those.

 

[kat]

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a doctor, and so did one of my brothers. We both became lawyers like Dad, and Dad's Dad and six other relatives.

We both said if there had been even one person in our circle who was a doctor, we would have done it. My brother, when he finished law school, walked across the street to the med school which said they'd take him...... He almost did it. After I had been practicing law for five years, I almost did it.

Now I'd like to be a perpetual mountain hiker.

 

[Nords]

Read a lot of Bob Heinlein's stuff (OK, all of it ). Pretty much always wanted to be an engineer. Didn't know what kind.

Just about every written word before I finished high school, and I kept up until he quit.

I remember trying to track down his stuff in the 1970s (from places like Gnome Press) in the days before interlibrary loans & Amazon.com.

Liked chemistry, but found out how badly it paid. 2+2=4. ChE, like 2B. Great fun, when I get to do any. Most of the time I get paid heavy bread just to size pipes. Also sized sewers and city water lines, and written the dreaded 'paint specs', too. Idiots get to do the fun stuff and they do a really bad job. I console myself by crying all the way to the bank.

Chemistry was too much fun to care about money! I was always destroying crockery & glassware with the home chemistry experiments.

My father was always bringing home cool stuff from his Westinghouse job (designing steam systems for nuclear reactors). We had sales samples of fuel rods (no fuel, as far as I knew), brochures, specs, and magazine articles. This was back when nuclear engineering was going to make electricity too cheap to bother metering it, and everyone was going to have personal jet cars by 2000. I remember writing a fifth-grade paper on how a nuclear reactor works. (I remember that because my mother saved it and gave it back to me after I graduated from Nuclear Power School. Thanks, Mom.) Not long after that I realized that there were colleges all over America where you could play work with both chemistry labs & nuclear reactors...

 

[2B]

Liked chemistry, but found out how badly it paid. 2+2=4. ChE, like 2B. Great fun, when I get to do any. Most of the time I get paid heavy bread just to size pipes. Also sized sewers and city water lines, and written the dreaded 'paint specs', too. Idiots get to do the fun stuff and they do a really bad job. I console myself by crying all the way to the bank.

I'll tie together this thread with the Bellingham thread. I'm not sure where you live but there's a small E&C firm in Bellingham that does work for the refineries in the area. They need pipes sized too. You may already be living there.

 

[W2R]

When I was a little girl, I longed to be a classical concert pianist. I worried that I might get arthritis in my fingers and be unable to play when I got to be as "old" as 28 or so.

Ironically, I have hardly touched a piano or any other instrument in 40 years. I am an oceanographer. And, I never got arthritis in my fingers.

A week or two ago, I saw (for the first time) what you can get in the way of an electronic piano from Yamaha for $2K-$3K. This is really exciting to me and takes one's breath away. It sounds so REAL, and feels so responsive, but takes up less space and can be played with headphones. Wow!! Right now I have no time for it, but maybe when I retire.....

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Hugh Hefner or Warren Beatty.

but...not anymore...

 

[Billy]

When I was a small child, I wanted to be a gypsy/old wise woman up in the hills. People would come to me to get their palms read or their fortunes told.

When I was a young girl I wanted to be a Carmelite nun -- tucked away from the world, quiet, no chaos.

When I was in college I wanted to be an anthropologist and visit native cultures to learn how humans lived all over the world. I wanted to see first hand what was similar in being human and what was different in the cultures.

Then I wanted to work for my masters in Library Science and become a corporate librarian or the curator of a museum.

Kate:

We both said if there had been even one person in our circle who was a doctor, we would have done it. My brother, when he finished law school, walked across the street to the med school which said they'd take him...... He almost did it. After I had been practicing law for five years, I almost did it.

Do you have any regrets about not becoming a doctor? Or are you satisfied with your choice? just curious... Thanks!

Be well,
Akaisha
Author, The Adventurer's Guide to Early Retirement

 

[HFWR]

A double-naught spy, or a fry cook. Jethro Bodine

OTOH, I was watching the "Making of the SI swimsuit issue" a few years ago, and one guy's job involve dusting the sand from the models' butt cheeks...

My kinda job... 8)

 

[sgeeeee]

. . .OTOH, I was watching the "Making of the SI swimsuit issue" a few years ago, and one guy's job involve dusting the sand from the models' butt cheeks...
. . .

Is there special equipment involved in doing that, or did he just use his toungue?

 

[OkieTexan]

At 6: A professional baseball player
At 9: A chemist. I got a chemistry set for Christmas
At 10: A doctor... chemistry is a big part of their education.
At 11: A geologist. We took a vacation to Utah and Colorado and learned about rocks, mining and oil exploration.
At 14: An electronics engineer -- I discovered radio and built several from scratch.
At 20: I considered pharmacy school.
At 35: Considered law school. Career placement tests ranked law as the profession that matched my aptitude, preferences, and personality.

Right now: Er'd and I have no idea when I will grow up.

 

[Andre1969]

I went through a few phases, just like everyone else, I'm sure! When I was a real little kid, like nursery school age, I just wanted to be a kid forever! When I was around 9 or 10, I wanted to be a real estate agent. I remember how much fun it was looking at houses when Mom was in the market at that time, and I thought it would be a fun job.

When I was around 11-12, I wanted to own my own trucking company. That was around 1981-82, when big rigs were really cool to us kids. "Smokey and the Bandit" and "BJ and the Bear" and stuff like that was fresh on our minds, before they messed it all up with "Smokey and the Bandit 3", and long before I learned the double meaning of "BJ and the Bear", as told on Wil and Grace!

Soon after the trucking phase, I wanted to be a videogame designer for Mattel Electronics. I got an Intellivision for my 12th birthday, and thought it was the coolest thing. Little did I realize how far videogames would come by the time I would reach adulthood, and how ancient history Mattel Electronics and the Intellivison would become! Back then they complained about videogame violence because you could fly over WWII Europe in all its 96X160 pixel resolution, 16-color glory. Nowadays in videogames you can kill your hooker after having sex with her and get your money back!

Anyway, after I outgrew videogames (the first time), I wanted to be a computer programmer. And at some point, I wanted to be an architect.

Ultimately, I ended up in a job where I sit in front of a computer all day and slowly go brain-dead. But I do like to check the real estate listings in far off locales from time to time. And I have an Intellivision emulator on the computer. And I still like trucks. And I'd still like to be a little kid with no responsibilities. I think I'll go play out in the snow now, although I guess I should be shoveling it. :

 

[brewer12345]

I wanted to be a firefighter ever since I could remember.

I have to tell you that I don't admire too many people (since most of us are assholes, down deep), but I do admire the local volunteer firefighters I have come to know. My neighbor is a 20+ year firefighter and a captain of one of the local houses. He and his bussies became firefighters because when they were kids they watched the mayor's house burn down and nobody could stop it. They didn't want to see any more neighbors lose their houses. So these guys go pull shifts as firefighters as well as carry one or two paying jobs.

 

[kat]

Kate:
Do you have any regrets about not becoming a doctor? Or are you satisfied with your choice? just curious... Thanks!

Nothing I can really call a regret. What I wanted to do was practice on an Indian reservation or a very poor rural area in the deep South. I can still picture it, the daydream. I can't call it a regret because I am sure there would be downsides that I can't see. But I do still picture it and am immensely curious how it would have been.

kate

 

[Lusitan]

Evolution of my career ambitions:

Astronaut (childhood) ... fighter pilot (teenager) ... filmmaker (college) ... retired (attorney).

 

[SteveR]

Scientist...... I are one.

Fire fighter....I were one (volunteer)

Astronaut...not in a millon years.

Doctor....paramedic was a close as I got.

Early retiree....I am on schedule to be one.

 

[saluki9]

I always wanted to be an airline pilot.

I don't forsee myself being able to ever do it full time considering the flight hours required, so part time will have to do.

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

Chemistry was too much fun to care about money!

I was about 24 and out of the Army when I decided what to major in. Time to get serious.

Earlier, I wanted to be Bob Dylan. Didn't last long.

 

[Sarah in SC]

I wanted to ride/train horses for a living. Funny that it took me reading all of your posts to remember just what it was I wanted to do...

Sarah

 

[yelnad]

As a small child, I wanted to be a nurse. Then a teacher (middle school). Then a lawyer (high school). Then in college I decided I didn't want to leave and now I work in higher education.