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Lunchtime Poll

Lunchtime Poll: Truth or Dare, Crazy Careers and Singalongs

Did you take up last week’s dare? It was to try something you’ve always avoided. For me, that was pickles. I still don’t like them. Let’s see this week’s challenge.

Truth: What was the craziest career you wanted to pursue when you were a kid and why? In second grade, I decided I wanted to be a nun. Not for any altruistic reason, but because I had it in my head that the world was ending any day and that my soul would be saved and I would go to heaven if I became a nun.

Dare: Try to get a singalong going in your office to “Do You Hear The People Sing” from the musical Les Mis. Here’s how it goes if you’ve forgotten:

By [E] Sally Lawton

My food groups are cheese, bacon, and hot tea. I like studying cities and playing with my cat, Buffy.

29 replies on “Lunchtime Poll: Truth or Dare, Crazy Careers and Singalongs”

Until I was six or so, I wanted to run a Barbie doll store. Not even kidding here. I had this vision of this huge, brightly colored stores with a big circular checkout stand in the direct center. And thousands of Barbie dolls, of course.

Then when I turned seven, it changed from that to Jedi knight, and it’s pretty much been there ever since.

 

(Edited because I accidentally deleted half of my comment!)

I wanted to be a Nun in second grade too. Not to get into heaven. No. I had read about some female saint’s body not rotting after she died, and that sounded like a good gig to get into.

I had a girl in the class I teach tell me she couldn’t decide if she wanted to be a biologist or a comic book artist when she grew up. So many feelings at that moment, let me tell you. I told her to keep studying both because she had lots of time to decide.

Egyptology. Specifically. I was raised on the History Channel, and before they got taken over by ALL NAZIS ALL THE TIME it was ALL THEORIES ON PYRAMID CONSTRUCTION ALL THE TIME.

One of my mum’s favourite stories to trot out about me is the time we were at Waterstone’s in central Cambridge and I got to talking to some random old man while I was looking for a better textbook on Egyptology (I was about seven at the time). My mum looks over and sees me chatting to this guy and is kind of alarmed because old man. So she comes over and I’m rattling off my favourite facts about the alignment of the shafts in Khufu’s pyramid and my mum is like “Hi, sorry, can I help?”

The man then introduces himself as the Herbert Thompson Professor of Egyptology at Cambridge University, gives my mum his card, and pays for my textbook.

*shades for my 7 year-old self*

I’m way less exceptional now. Darn my mother for not drilling that potential oil well for all it was worth! I could be prodigious and relentlessly unhappy!

I tried something I was scared of last week, but I forgot that was the dare. I went to a non-traditional, non-denominational Church with my friends, and as a straight-laced Catholic person this was kind of scary for me, but I forced myself to be open minded and it was actually good!

I didn’t have any super crazy career dreams, I guess. I did think about being a nun for a long time (when I was older, even), but my faith is not really strong enough and also I wouldn’t want to give up sexual relationships. So I gave up on that. But I do love the mission of being called to service. I can just do that in different ways, I think. I also wanted to be a dancer, but I really danced for most of my life. I thought for many years I would be a psychologist, but I took psych 101 in college and I was like “I AM OUT!” I don’t know why it didn’t suit me, but it didn’t.

It’s not too crazy, but I wanted to be a nurse because I liked the outfit.  Then I found out you had to deal with blood- that was a short lived dream.

I also wanted to be a nun for awhile, because again I liked the outfits/habits. Then I found out that #1 Methodists don’t have nuns and #2 I couldn’t have a family.

Flight attendant, I wanted to be paid to travel the world.

Oh my goodness, I love Les Mes.  One of my favorite parts in the performance is the “People Sing,”  The stage moved and the people were “marching.”  Very powerful!!!  Did you see the anniversary performance on TV?  They had all the people who had played each role come on and sing their parts.  Loved seeing all the Val Jean’s.

I totally forgot I wanted to be a flight attendant too!  Legit in high school.  I even did a speech about it for careers in speech class.  My mom tried to tell me (diplomatically) that I could probably choose a more challenging career… but she’s a snob. Sometimes I still want to be a flight attendant.

I wanted to train horses, because I knew I was too big to be a jockey. Even thought I’d never ridden a horse in my life, I had serious plans to move to Kentucky and train racehorses.

As for the dare, since my office consists of me, I shall belt out the entire song by myself. So business as usual, really.

When I was in fourth grade I wanted to be an actress/lawyer/astronaut/writer. Note that I did not want to be an actress who played lawyers and astronauts… I wanted to be an actress who was also a lawyer and who was chosen to be an astronaut and then became a writer. Lofty career goals, indeed.

The actress part never really went away, although it transitioned to directing mostly. And the writing has stuck around on and off. Lawyer went away (although I never stopped loving a good argument). Astronaut was just never going to happen (although I’ve got a really cool opportunity to cover some NASA stuff soon if the launch I’m covering ever stops getting pushed back).

I wanted to be a paleontologist from when I was about 2 and a half until I was 9. Well, either a paleontologist or an astronaut. Or maybe both. Both was good.

I remember one time in my preschool class, we had a “what do you want to be day.” And I blurted, “Paleontologist!”

The teacher didn’t know what it was. My four-year-old self had to explain it to her.

But when I was 9 I decided I wanted to be a professional writer. That lasted for a good few years until I had a hard time writing due to the emergence of The Critic in my psyche. I still think that it would be a good fall-back career…?

I primarily wanted to be a writer/rock star/comedienne who directed movies and acted sometimes and occasionally did things like cure cancer. I started my first business when I was five, but it was totally unrelated to my life goals; I sold rocks door-to-door. I did have a few things published here & there throughout the years (a poem called ‘The Car’ was my first pre-K masterpiece), so I did do some writing, but essentially I wanted to be a funnier version of Rod Serling who also did music. Unfortunately, all of this ambition really just resulted in too much dilution and made it more difficult to decide what the heck I really wanted to do…and roughly 35 years later I still have the same problem!

I also sold rocks, not door to door, but I set up a table at the end of our driveway.

I even sold the neighbor boy a rock that had been spray painted silver when his dad was painting their fence.  He paid $5 for it, but my mom made me give back the money because it was technically the neighbor boy’s rock to begin with.

That is pretty awesome. Though now, being older and slightly wiser, I have some reservations about keeping any sort of long ranging animals cooped up in zoo conditions. But dolphins, at least, seem to get plenty of mental stimulation in training-type environments.

Career: When I was 3, I announced (as my mom describes it) at the grocery store that I wanted to be a Grocery Bagger when I grew up! Why? Because then I would get to talk to everybody who came in! (scared the crap out of my mother – I think this is the point when they were like, “You can be a doctor!”)

Dare: My cubemate already sings at his desk (I should get a Nobel Prize in Physics for not stabbing him because I am clearly defying some natural law by resisting the urge). So, I’m going to skip this dare. Cause I really want that prize. :)

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