What did you want to be when you grew up?

[sloopjohnc]

I've been doing marketing communications for 25 years now (copywriting, advertising, PR, social media, direct marketing, graphic design supervision, online advertising, etc.) and it suits me just fine. Before that, I dabbled in teaching for five years on and off and was even an insurance broker for five years out of college.

What I really wanted to be was a garbage man or fire fighter. When I see what my fire fighter friends made and get as a pension, I'm sorry I didn't get into that. I almost did in my early 20s, but didn't know how to go about it.

I thought being a garbage collector looked fun when I was little. Either driving the truck or going house to house and dumping the garbage cans in the truck's compactor. I would run and watch them from the kitchen window on the morning they came by.

Based on my music collection, some folks might way I fulfilled that wish.

[harvey k-tel]

What I really wanted to be was a garbage man...

Who says you're not?

[Sneelock]

I wanted to be Merv Griffin. I'd get home from school and watch the afternoon broadcast until someone made me "go outside and play". I'd run down the driveway to the garage door and check the lining of the jacket I wasn't wearing. I'd shift my weight from leg to leg and attempt an amusing and humble monologue to the dog and the sawhorses.

SPOILER ALERT: I did not grow up to be Merv Griffin.

[GoogaMooga]

I remember as a child how we once locked ourselves out of our house. When the locksmith arrived and I discovered what he charged for a minute's work, I knew what I wanted to be. Later I pursued a dream of becoming a filmmaker ("But what I really want to do is direct"), but realizing how tough THAT was when I was at film school, I scaled down my ambition and decided I'd be an editor. Now, at 55, I realize I should have been a comics publisher all along. If only I'd had that wisdom when I was 21.

[Jimbo]

Doesn't everyone want to be a bus driver?

[The Modernist]

I wanted to be Charlie George.

[harvey k-tel]

I wanted to be a monkey and live in the jungle with my monkey friends and cavort in the treetops and fight crime.

[Penk!]

I wanted to be Charlie George.

... driving a bus

[sloopjohnc]

I wanted to be a monkey and live in the jungle with my monkey friends and cavort in the treetops and fight crime.

Who says you're not.

[Penk!]

Paleontologist was a big one: I had a serious dinosaur phase and when I was about eight I got scolded at the Natural History Museum in London for loudly pointimg out the errors or debatable information in their displays.

When I was in my early teens I was curious about journalism, but eventually realised I didn’t have the pushy or driven personality for it.

I’d love to pretend that middle-management administrator has always been my dream job, but I guess I can cling to the fact I work with music and culture...

[sloopjohnc]

I wanted to be Charlie George.

I was a big kid - tall for my age.

I had it all figured out: I'd play for the San Francisco 49ers as either a defensive end or linebacker in the Fall, take Rick Barry's spot at small forward in the Winter for the San Francisco Warriors during the basketball season and then play third base or centerfield for the San Francisco Giants in the Summer. I figured I'd be so good that the Niners could wait a couple weeks until the baseball season shut down to play for the 49ers.

Based on my size, I figured I'd be around 6' 4" and around 220 lbs.

I stopped growing when I was 14.

At a summer basketball camp I went to with my friends when I was that age, the coaches kinda drooled over my three friends and I. I was the shortest at 6 ft, and my other friends were 6' 2", 6" 3" and 6' 4" as freshmen in high school. Too bad we were shitty.

[Count Machuki]

I’d love to pretend that middle-management administrator has always been my dream job, but I guess I can cling to the fact I work with music and culture...

+1

[Robert]

Doesn't everyone want to be a bus driver?

Yes, or an ambulance man

[Jimbo]

Doesn't everyone want to be a bus driver?

Yes, or an ambulance man

There was a Superman episode when the bus driver keeled over and the kid had to drive the bus. Then Superman swooped in and took over the bus, the bastard. To this day I mind meld and wish the bus driver would have a heart attack just so I could take over.

One of my students is a paramedic and does ambulance duty. Much of her work involves ferrying dead old people, especially since there are so many elderly folk in Tokyo.

[Polishgirl]

A nun.

[souphound]

I wanted to be an accountant. My godfather-uncle was one at a large firm and was doing really well. After 3 years of post-secondary accounting study, I finally realized just how boring that was. So I left uni and got a job managing records stores for 5 or so years. Then got a job working in an office with regular hours. The fact that I was computer literate back in the day (I learned COBOL and Fortran using mainframes and punch cards). After a few years at that job, the company got bought out and my job changed drastically to basically a data entry clerk for a shitty company. So I looked around and found my present job in risk management consulting for accounting firms (going on 28 years here)

[Hightea]

I wanted to be either a veterinarian or a forest ranger type or something interesting at a National Park.
Then I saw what they do do pets at the Vet and said no way.

So I fell back on my dream job a Pension guy.

[sloopjohnc]

Doesn't everyone want to be a bus driver?

Yes, or an ambulance man

There was a Superman episode when the bus driver keeled over and the kid had to drive the bus. Then Superman swooped in and took over the bus, the bastard. To this day I mind meld and wish the bus driver would have a heart attack just so I could take over./quote]

I think that's the whole premise of Speed with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. Throw in a madman, Dennis Hopper, and voila - movie.

[Rayge]

Different things at different times (and irt was quite late in life I was prepared o recognize that I had in fact Grown Up. By the time I could get my head around the idea of growing up, I though what I'd do was maybe be a zoologist or explorer, or maybe goalkeeper, then astronomer, but basically I really wanted to continue being a student, so thought, academic. By this time, though, I'd decided I wasn't going to 'be' what I was going to do for a living, and started thinking of myself as a writer in waiting, and a diletantte aristocrat manqué. I took proper jobs as a teacher, then in market research and advertising, but quit at 30, bummed about supporting myself by selling dope and odd-jobbing, and somehow actually ended up writing for a living, even if it for someone else, and mostly non-fiction. So it went.

[Goat Boy]

I don't ever recall wanting to be anything that strongly as a teenager but certainly as a kid I had dreams of being a footballer.

When I was older maybe an archeologist or an architect. I can remember being vaguely interested in both but nothing ever really jumped out. I've always just kinda fallen into things