An Essay A Day For A Year
By Roe
Day 29, January 29, 2012
***
When I was a little boy about three years old, I remember adults used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. At first I really didn’t understand the question. I knew I was a boy, and I thought they were asking me if I wanted to change to be a girl instead. “I want to stay a boy”, I answered. I remember that made them laugh, so they thought I was being funny. That made me think I didn’t understand the question, so the next time I was asked again I assumed that they meant maybe that I could change to be an animal instead of a boy. At that time I really liked the cheetahs that I saw on TV, so I answered, “when I grow up I want to be a cheetah”. That of course brought even more laughs. “So you want to go fast! Well maybe you mean you want to become a race car driver when you grow up”, said one of my uncles. He seemed really animated and smiled at me, so to avoid more laughs I answered, “yeah, a race car driver!”. I think I only had a vague idea what a race car driver was because my mom used to yell at my dad for driving crazy like some kind of race car driver, so I thought that when I grew up I could drive crazy like my dad.
Many years later I pieced together that the grown ups wanted me to tell them what I imagined for a career for myself when I grew up. I listened how the other kids my age seemed to have it all figured out. I want to be a fireman. I want to be a policeman. I want to be an astronaut. I want to be a doctor. I just didn’t understand why I had to be anything when I grew up. I wasn’t even happy that I had to grow up at all. There was no way I wanted to walk into fires, I watched the firemen do that when a neighbor’s house burned down. I didn’t want to be a policeman, I watched the policemen beating up hippie people on TV and I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to be an astronaut, sitting on top of a giant bomb and being sent to the moon didn’t sound like a career at all. I for sure didn’t want to stick needles in people and get blood on me, so I just stuck to race car driver to impress the adults and keep them from laughing at me. For a short time I wanted to be a fighter pilot, but then I met a neighbor who told stories to everyone how he just came back from his second tour in Vietnam toasting the enemy with napalm. That was the end of my dreams of being a fighter pilot.
By high school I realized that all my peers had dreams of careers, and they took classes for college prep, or shop classes, or ROTC to prepare to be in the military. Many were on track for college or Olympic sports. As usual I felt out of place, since after more than 10 years pondering on the question of career, I still really didn’t know what I wanted to do, or agree with the idea that I had to do anything. You have to get a job. You have to support yourself and your family. Well I really thought I was already somebody, and being told I had to do anything never sat well with me. I finally graduated early from high school so that I could work to earn money and have enough independence so that people would stop telling me what to do. That is when my career chose me instead of my choosing my career. I worked in whatever and wherever so I had money to do what I wanted, and that was to restore and modify my little MG sports car. I thought it worked out really well, since when my parents and peers got on my case for being a lowly junkyard parts salesman or mechanic or whatever, I would get in my car and drive away so that I didn’t have to listen to them. It took me a few years to realize that I didn’t like anything I was doing, or my MG, or being reminded that a bright young man like me was falling short of my potential.
One day I was talking to Nick, an employee that I had hired from New Zealand who had been traveling continuously around the world for 11 years, and who was at that time working for me in the U.S., his 39th country. I told him about my career conundrum. He told me that what you do for a dream career is the average of your priorities and your abilities. He said his grandpa told him as a little boy that your dream career is an activity you get paid to do that you would gladly pay someone else for the privilege to do. As soon as he said that my eyebrows went up, and he had my attention.
“The problem is that you may not have the feet to be a ballerina!”, his grandpa continued, but if you get your priorities straight you may just be the world’s greatest ballerina choreographer”. He didn’t really understand the priority part, and neither did I, so he went on to explain old Grandpa’s philosophy. He told his grandpa that he wanted to be like Marco Polo and travel the world. “Consider it done!”, said Grandpa, “you have everything it takes and more, but it is going to cost you!”. My co worker went on to explain how he had left New Zealand the day after he had graduated from his high school at age 17, with a few hundred dollars, one change of clothes, and a toothbrush. That was funny to me since this employee still had a few hundred dollars, one change of clothes, and a tooth brush 11 years later. “Marco Polo is my only priority. All my friends back home have careers and money and homes and wives and children and many toys, and very grand lives”, he said, “and I am happy for them. I wish I had those things too. Many, many times in the last 11 years I have been so lonely, so cold, so hungry. But I would give someone $ 100 a day to work in Los Angeles so I could go to Hollywood boulevard and try surfing in Huntington beach”. That was funny because I was paying him $ 100 per day and we were within an hour of Hollywood and Huntington Beach.
“How long will you be working for me here?”, I asked him. “How much is a bus ticket to Mexico?”, was his reply. I was so impressed that I told him that I may just take him to those places personally. “How bad do you want to do that?”. He asked. I told him that I had to run the shop and fix my car and pay my rent and wash my clothes and get a map and check the weather and then make a plan to do that. He smiled at me and said, “we just found your problem, mate! Let’s imagine that your dream career is to guide Marco Polo around the world! I’ll pay you the $100 that you just paid me yesterday to ride those two bikes there on your wall to Hollywood right now, and then on the way to Tijuana we’ll stop in Huntington and surf”. When I stopped laughing at his joke, I explained that the bikes were too old, it was too far, we didn’t have enough money, and that he was just plain crazy! Yes sir! That is what they told Marco Polo when he left for China, and that is what they told me when I left New Zealand 11 years ago. But I’m serious mate. Priorities mate, and it’s going to cost you. You and me giving up anything and everything for what we would pay someone to do!”
Well, we left 5 minutes later on those two old Schwinn bikes, and it was a miserable 150 mile disaster. We broke down, we froze, we almost got arrested, we fought, and we couldn’t even feel our legs or butts when we arrived at the border 3 days later. He then shook my hand as he handed me back the bicycle he borrowed. “Remember mate”, he said, “there’s nothing to it, but to do it”, and he handed me the $100 that he offered. “Hey”, I said, I thought you were joking, you don’t have to give me this”. “You need it a lot more that I do mate”, he said, and he walked across the border with his one change of clothes and this toothbrush.
That day all my priorities got rearranged. I still remember how miserable I was on that trip, and I remember how much trouble I got in when I returned. I remember how long I kept that $100, and how many times I looked at it and thought of Nick and wondered where he was. Eventually I figured out that what I wanted to when I grew up was to love a girl to by my wife, and have lots of kids. I figured out that I would pay to have that, and give up and sacrifice anything for it, and for her, and for them. And finally with no less resolve and craziness I set out to make that happen. Now here I am almost 30 years later and I still don’t have a dream career. I have been so miserable so many times, but I have never been lonely. I have traveled the world with my dream girl and my four children, many times with just a change of clothes and a toothbrush. And like Nick, I am happy, and anything is worth it for just one more day.
My dream career would be to write an essay wishing everyone all the fortune in the world doing what makes them happy. Say hello to Nick for me.
See you tomorrow.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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