What do you want to be when you grow up?

4boydad asks the following questions in a new meme. Here are my answers.

1. What did you want to be when you grew up (WYGU) while you were a kid?
The first thing I remember wanting to be was an astronaut. I desperately wanted to fly, land on other worlds, and live a life of adventure. My evil eldest brother typed a prank letter to me from the Lego Space Academy, informing me that I had been accepted and only had to send in my $1,000,000 application fee (my brother went on to a long and successful career with a Nigerian bank). The thrilling hope that rose within me and the combination of my two greatest loves (space and Lego) fell back to earth quicker than a Soviet space capsule as everyone was very fast (and gleeful I think) to point out that you had to be a pilot to be an astronaut and that pilots can't wear glasses (I wore them young). I moved on to other dreams. By my ninth grade year, a fascinating history teacher inspired me to follow in his foot steps. I remember swimming a year later in a very, very cold river in Mentone, Alabama and being struck by the fact that I would become a history teacher and then start my own school. I drew up a curriculum and organizational structure with checks and balances between three administrative bodies (teacher, parents, students). The next year, I briefly flirted with the idea of becoming an underwater archeologist, but claustrophobia and Jaws made that idea untenable. By the time I graduated, I was back to teacher.

2. What did you want to be WYGU when you graduated from High School?
See #1. In addition, I wanted to have published a series of fantasy fiction and three works of Civil War history by the time I was 35.

3. What (if anything) is your college degree in? (overachievers: feel free to add Graduate degrees)
BA History and English. Most of my friends when I was college age wanted to be teachers. Some are living the dream. Most have woken up from the nightmare.

4. What do you do for a living now?
I currently teach English. I am not sure that I can claim to be doing it "for a living", but it pays the most of the bills. I have been teaching for ten years with two brief breaks for the assembly of control units for industrial print presses and inside steel sales. Last year I taught history. Next year I am thinking, math? Then off to the Lego Space Academy as soon as I get my millions from the Royal Bank of Nigeria.

My son still professes to want to be a dinosaur and then a teacher when he grows up.

Peace