Stop It - You’re Scaring the Kids

When I was a kid, the question “What do you want to be?” made my palms sweat. I got so worked up that I became terrified of it. Why were people always asking me what I wanted to be? They’d put their hand on my shoulder, lean over me, and stare down their noses and say, “So....what do you want to be when you grow up?” Even now, hearing anybody say that brings back memories of nose hairs, and old-man smell. Or else puffy shoulder pads and too much Jean Nate.

The question ran in circles inside my head. It grew from a little hamster on a squeaky wheel into a pack of screeching brain ferrets.

"What do you want to be?!"

"What do you want to be?"

“I don't know!!”…

There were so many variables, and too many ways it could all go wrong. I needed a plan, or a mind map, or a dream journal. I needed help. I needed Tony Robbins...Air. I needed air.

I took a deep breath, and gave it serious thought. What did I want to be? That....was such a stupid question! Then, like any other anxious, and slightly neurotic kid, I asked myself even stupider ones:  

Would growing up really turn me into something different?

Once it did would grown-up me even be me anymore? 

Did that explain why adults were all so weird?

Ahhhh! It was so unfair. I had just started figuring out who I was. And I liked me....so far. I didn’t want to become something else. Not to mention having to figue out what that was. People said I could be anything I wanted, but that's a lot of things. How was I supposed to decide?

That's when the suggestions started. 

So creative....have thought of doing any writing?

My daddy was preacher, and you’re so much like him. Have you thought about.....?

Wow! The stuff that boy says...just like a politician. What if....      

Police officer was good enough for your father, and it's good for... 

That great voice you've got - radio's the thing for you, kid...

So many choices. An arsenal of possibilities were being fired at me like guided missiles with 'someday' painted on the sides. Their intentions were noble, and the suggestions weren't bad, per se. They just all sounded so...boring! 

If I had to grow up and become something, I wanted to become something cool. I had a few ideas of my own, and mine came from a better source - Saturday morning cartoons.

By the Power of Greyskull

Autobots, roll out!

Yo, Joe!

Thunder, Thunder, Thunder – Thunder Cats, Ho!

All these amazing heroes were calling me to action. How could I help but answer? What little boy wouldn't want to run off and…Oh, wait a minute - that was it! That's what I could be – a hero. Yes! All the worrying would be over. I’d tell mom, and she'd tell everybody else, and they'd stop asking me that stupid question.

The following weekend, I concluded a thoroughly researched and detailed presentation, when my own mother put her hand on my shoulder. She leaned over me, looked down her nose and said, “Oh, that sounds so dangerous. Can’t you be something that doesn't involve getting shot?”

"Getting shot?"?! Like she just shot me down, you mean?

Be anything, huh? Didn’t they get it?

The potential to be anything gave you a selection pool of potentially everything. That's way too many things. And it clearly wasn’t true. I mean, if being a SilverHawk or Master of the Universe was off the table, what other restrictions were they hiding from me?

I decided they meant I could be anything, so long as anyhing didn't include everything awesome.

Meanwhile, the suggestions kept rocketing in. Some even seemed intentionally unhelpful. For example, at one family reunion my alcoholic uncle Larry suggested I become a mime.

I was skeptical. "A mime, uncle Larry? Really?!"

"…...oh, yeah!”, he slurred with confidence. “You could be rich and famous. And I'll tell you something else, kid; chicks dig mimes."

You might wonder how twisted or cynical a person has to be to suggest something like that to a child. But what you should be wondering is how desperate and gullible a child would have to be to try it. Well, I can you from experience that no body ‘digs’ mimes. 

Almost too late, I made the connection. Of course, they'd been talking about a career rather than a complete metamorphosis. And of course, that realization didn't help either. Why was deciding where a person would collect their paychecks so important that it gets reframed as transmutation of identity?

In addition to being worried, now I starting to get scared. Really scared.

I was scared that I'd never become anything. 

Eventually I ended up doing what a lot of people do; live with the confusion, and work as a waiter. What scared me then was how much nothing changed. Is that what life was? New fears, added onto old?

I was still the same anxious, insecure kid, only now with a driver’s license, and then a mortgage. In time, with two daughters of my own. 

The first time one of them asked me if she could be anything she wanted, I swear I almost said “Sure”. But, I couldn’t tell her that…What was I going to do? What could I say?! I remembered the heartache and disappointment when I discovered I’d never shoot laser beams out of my eyes, or breathe under water, or even own a magical sword. I just couldn’t do it. Because if I did, she would find out. She’d find out that what her dad had become wasn’t really much more than what he was when he’d wondered the same thing. It would worry her, scare here, and maybe break her little heart. What was I going to say?

Suddenly, I had an idea. I knelt down beside her, looked her in the eye, rubbed noses and said “I don’t know, honey. All I know is that I like who you are.”

She gave me a hug, then ran off to play. I don’t know if that helped or not.

At least, I think I didn't scare the kid.