Whatever Will Be, Will Be

This week we are discussing our early aspirations…what we wanted to be when we grew up.
I remember finding out right away that I was good in school and wanting to be a teacher. That didn’t work out completely as I expected. I did teach religion part time and tutored family and friends…and I found myself homeschooling my sons for years, along with some group classes.

But that was not a career.

I also remember that, for a while, I wanted to be a nurse. I think most girls my age at one time thought of becoming one. My mother told me to shoot for “doctor”, but when I was 8 or 9 and there were few women doctors, “nurse” seemed more romantic. A cousin and I both had planned on becoming nurses and going to our grandparents’ homeland. That didn’t work for me, however, that cousin became a doctor…but she still hasn’t gotten to Italy.

I also thought of becoming a librarian for a short time. I volunteered for years in my grandchildren’s school libraries and I frequent my local branch so often that at least four people have thought that I work there. My house has more books than some libraries, but alas, I am simply a bit of a book hoarder.

When I was still very young I truly enjoyed science and thought that astronomy was cool and atomic science was really something. I didn’t go into science but one of my sons is in graduate school extending his environmental health sciences degree and right now has an internship with the Food and Drug Administration studying atomic particle impact on health and up the food chain. When he comes in on weekends, when he describes his work, it is fascinating! [ I just got news that I may be able live vicariously even more through my son as he is up for an internship with the CDC this Summer.] And I impressed more than one astronomer by declaring that we took off and drove about forty miles at three in the morning TWICE in sub-freezing weather to get a view of Halley’s Comet in 1986. But the chance of making a career of had flown by.

I also always enjoyed archaeology. I never got to dig in Egypt or Santorini, but you should see me fossil hunt here in Kentucky! I did not know there were so many fossils just lying around, and in so many rocks. I not only have fossilized clams, trilobites and other animals embedded in the rocks that surround my patio, walkways and flowerbeds, but we find arrowheads, club heads, weights,( from barges), and many other old items in the nearby river after a flood or the Spring thaw. Very interesting.

I never dreamed of being a salesperson, but I sold many things, and made displays on a store. I never looked forward to being a bookkeeper, but I was one. I never expected to be a personal assistant, but I was one of those, too. Although I grew up in my mother’s kitchen, I never anticipated being a cook or baker or restaurateur, but I was.(Food blogging? Who could ever have guessed it would even exist!)  And although I wrote a bit in my head and on the sly when I was a kid, I never aspired to be a writer. I never foresaw being able to give someone something that I wrote to read, but I did and I have, and I do.

Aside from your past dreams, did you ever do anything totally unexpected?