What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

A recent online discussion asked the question we all heard in our childhood.

Leaves your skin silky-smooth.

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

The answers in my era were mostly predictable. If you were a boy, you wanted to be a fireman, doctor, cowboy, pilot or train engineer. Typical girl answers included teacher, nurse, airline stewardess, fashion model and secretary. 

Not surprisingly, more mundane professions like accountant, insurance salesman, auditor and bank teller rarely, if ever, made the list.

Girls were encouraged to choose homemaking as a career, hence the home economics classes we endured in junior high school. We learned how to be Donna Reed, with skills like baking a cake and sewing a skirt. Boys took shop classes to prepare them to be Mr. Handy Pants Fix-It, capable of managing such tasks as using tools and building things like birdhouses. 

In most schools, these classes no longer exist. I have always been a proponent of teaching life skills, although I believe the classes should be mandatory for both sexes. Also, every high school curriculum needs to include things like balancing a budget. And how things like insurance and taxes work. These skills are clutch, but most kids are clueless, leaving them open to difficult lessons in the real world.

For the life of me, I can't remember what my dream profession was as a child. I do remember playing teacher with my younger brother, but that may have merely been an excuse to boss him around...something I did with relish until he grew to the point where he was bigger than I and was therefore in a position to ignore me. 

There was a time when I thought I'd like to do TV commercials. I would stand in front of the bathroom mirror and read from the back label of a jar of cold cream, using slogans I'd made up. 

In high school, we had to take aptitude tests. Creative writing seemed to come to the top of my list of skills, but at the time, I didn't know how to parlay that into a career. Instead, I fell back on the tried-and-true profession of secretary. In high school, I took business prep classes and found myself typing spreadsheets and memos in an accounting department. It wasn't until my mid-20s when I realized I wanted to be in advertising. 

Fortunately, I was able to make the transition, thanks to the influence of a mentor who saw I was unhappy and likely to leave to the company. I started out as a secretary in the advertising department, but I was so excited about the opportunity, I worked my ass off. I learned to write copy, to put together motivational newsletters and eventually, paste up ads for printing, manage special events and write radio spots. If it weren't for J.B. Robinson Jewelers and the amazing mentors I had there, I'm not sure how my career would have looked.

Alas, I never did get a stint in front of the camera, although someday I think I'd like to give audio book reading a shot. My voice, if not my face, is still in pretty solid shape. 

Retirement isn't in my immediate future. I feel the pull of something new coming, and I'm looking forward to it.

That rocking chair will just have to wait.