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I am almost 28 years old and I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. My girlfriend and I recently discussed some career options, which basically involved driving down the road and her telling me that I could be whatever sort of person worked in the building we were passing, such as a surgeon when driving past the hospital, etc. It was a pretty productive talk.

Since then I have sort of been thinking about what I thought I wanted to be when I was younger. Let’s take a look at some jobs that I thought I’d want to do and why I know better now.

Astronaut

• The idea: I think that most kids (maybe just boys?) want to be an astronaut at some point. The biggest draw is that you’d get to go into frickin’ OUTER SPACE. How cool is that? Maybe see some aliens? At the very least you’d get all the freeze-dried ice cream you could eat. In school they always made it seem like being an astronaut was pretty much the coolest thing you could do.
• The reality: Spending a hell of a lot of time in a very tiny space with some people who probably get to smelling sorta rank after a little while. Yeah, the view of earth would be awesome, but you are pretty much working all the time. Not to mention all the time you’d be away from your family (this might be a bonus for some people). As awesome as zero gravity would be, I bet it gets old. And I apologize for being gross, but I bet the space shuttle is like a big Dutch oven, and you can’t just roll the windows down in space.

Advertising Executive

• The idea: I’d get to sit around and think up hilarious TV commercials. People would call me up all the time and say, “Hey, man, I saw your commercial for _____. My wife literally gave herself a hernia laughing so hard!” Then we would high-five each other over the phone before I got cracking on the next 30-second window into my genius.
• The reality: I’d probably get stuck doing assloads of market research and coming up with print ads for old lady multivitamins. And since I hate advertising, I’d wake up every morning despising myself for unleashing a plague of product promotion on the planet.

Scrooge McDuck

• The idea: I’d have a giant vault of money I could swim around in.
• The reality: I’d totally break my neck diving into an enormous pile of loose change. Also, Scrooge was kind of old, and despite the fact that he was the richest duck in all of wherever he lived (much to the chagrin of Flintheart Glomgold), he never really had any sexy young duck chickies hanging around. Just his three nephews. Hugh Hefner, he was not.

Oddly enough, the one job I always thought I would be near the bottom of my list of desired occupations (teacher) is now working its way toward the top. I don’t know if I really want to make a difference in kids’ lives or if I just want to have a summer vacation for the rest of my life, but either way it’s a pretty sweet gig. The obvious downside is the the pay, which you can bump up for going to school for forever and a day. Crap pay vs. more school is sort of a push for me, so I’ll just keep going to school to be whatever it is that I’ll end up being.

Who knows, maybe if I keep at this long enough I’ll be able to slap a bunch of blog posts together, call it a book, and have a career as a writer.

*re-reading post*

Okay, so maybe not.

I hope this doesn’t seem in poor taste after what happened yesterday at Virginia Tech, but…

I’ve always thought it would be awesome to get shot. Not the actual getting shot part, of course. I just think it would be neat if I could tell people that I took one to the shoulder or leg and then show them my awesome bullet wound scar. People would think I was tough when I told them about how I guess it kinda stung when the bullet hit but it’s really not as bad as everyone makes it sound.

The reality is that it would probably hurt like hell and no matter where the bullet hit, there’s a good chance I might die. I was mowing my yard yesterday and bumped my knuckle on something when I was starting the mower; it didn’t really hurt, but when I was done mowing my finger was covered in dried blood. I can’t imagine how much an actual bullet wound would bleed.

I actually have been shot on a couple of occasions, but not from a real bullet. The first such incident occurred when I was in the fifth grade. My friend Paul and his brother John, who lived across the street, had gotten a dartboard for Christmas that came with a CO₂ pistol that fired small darts. We were messing around in his room with it and joking about whether or not he would shoot me.

Then he shot me.

I don’t remember it hurting, only being stunned that I had a small metal pellet stick out of my forearm with some green fuzz on the back of it. The actual dart portion was only about 1/4″ long, so I just pulled it out and gave it back to him. In hindsight, I should have stabbed him with it, but he’d get his in due time.

I was a couple years older the next time I was the victim of a gun crime. Some of the neighborhood kids were in my backyard and bored, and we decided it would be a good idea to play a version of dodgeball. Instead of a red rubber ball, one person would sit on the back patio with a BB gun and try to hit everyone else as they ran from tree to tree at the back edge of the yard. I took a shot to the stomach, but it just stung a little bit. It didn’t even break through my t-shirt. BB’s move slowly enough through the air that you can see them coming at you, but I still got hit. In what I consider to be a bit of poetic justice, my friend Paul (the same one who shot me with the dart) took a BB to his lip that resulted in a fair amount of bleeding.

So there’s more evidence of a tiny, can-barely-call-it-an-injury that had a decent amount of blood coming out of it. I will take this opportunity to officially remove “Getting Non-Fatally Shot” off my list of life goals. Unless, of course, I am diving in front of a loved one to prevent them from getting shot, which would be worth the loss of blood for the staggering amount of cool points I would get for telling people that story. If any of you thinks you might be getting shot soon, please let me know so I can hang around you until it goes down. I’ll even yell, “NOOOOOOOOOO!” when I jump in front of you, I promise. It will totally be worth it for all involved.

I have to start this post off by saying I’m a little disappointed in all of you. I was hoping that after a week without a peep from me, my inbox would be flooded with emails saying things like, “omgwtf happened to you I need my zest,” and, “get writing, the blogosphere am cry,” but no such luck. I’ve started about four or five posts in the past week and before deciding the ideas were crap and scrapping them.

Today’s entry will be short. A little happy and some very sad.

First the sad news. Kurt Vonnegut died last night. He was from my hometown of Indianapolis, and was far and away my favorite author. A huge part of my desire to become a writer is because of his influence, and after discussing his death with someone earlier today, I realized he was the closest thing I’ve ever had to a personal hero. The world is poorer for having lost him. I would highly recommend reading anything by him that you can, but Slaughterhouse Five is my personal favorite. “He’s with God now.” (if you’re familiar with his work, you’ll get this joke)

In happier news, I have found what is almost assuredly the best TV show ever. It totally makes me want to start my own public access show. Enjoy Let’s Paint, Exercise, Blend Drinks.