No one ever says, “I want to be a camwhore when I grow up.”
“As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? If that dream died at some point, explain why.”
Mindbump.com
When I was little, I wanted to be a ballerina. I wanted to wear the tutu and toe shoes and dance in The Nutcracker. Unfortunately, I was a fat little kid who never went to dance classes. I envied the girls who did go to classes at times, because they always had pictures of themselves in their pretty recital costumes. The photos always came in threes; the girls would take ballet, tap, and jazz, and there was always a different costume for each style. I’m happy now that I didn’t go, I’ve seen how expensive the costumes are, on top of the classes themselves.
Later, I wanted to be a nurse, like my grandmother. Or at least, I thought she was a nurse at the time. To me, anyone who worked in the hospital and wore white was either a doctor or a nurse, depending on if they were male or female. You worked at the hospital and helped sick people to get better, and at the time I was too young to know the horrors that health care workers have to deal with, both the terrible things you go through with patients and the terrible health care system that you work under. But I had dreams of wearing the little white hat and stockings and having my very own stethoscope and helping sick kids to not be so scared of the hospital and promise them that the needle stick while drawing blood would only hurt for a second.
At one point, I wanted to be a jockey and race horses. That didn’t last very long, since I’m perfectly content to go trail-ride speed on a horse and cantering means that I’ve really gotten brave. Not to mention that I’m easily twice the weight of most jockeys.
Thus, I’m 31 and have worked a handful of completely unrelated jobs. I’ve worked retail; my first job was Christmas help at Toys ‘R’ Us. It was during the first Power Ranger craze, and it was hell. My last night was Christmas Eve, and a few of us beheaded a stuffed Barney plushy that we’d made a clothesline noose for and hung in the stock room. I’ve worked food service, working my way up to supervisor at a Little Caesar’s in the local K-Mart, where we’d haze newbies by trying to convince them cornmeal was really tasty or locking them in the walk-in fridge. I’ve worked tech support for a local ISP and a massive national bank. We got laid off from the ISP via our answering machine, but it was expected, after all the company president was a moron and left his laptop connected to the network without a password, and we found all the budget info for the following year. I got fired from the bank for writing the very blog that you’re reading right now. I worked in a lighter factory, and I’ve worked as the Easter Bunny at a local mall. I’ve gotten naked for $2.99/minute via webcam, and toss in an extra dollar a minute and I’ll do something like smoke a cigar, or show you belly button, or chew gum, or hell, there was even that night I slathered myself in cooking oil because some guy liked his girls to be shiny.
Now, I’m a pharmacy tech. My official title is Certified Pharmacy Technician. I wouldn’t say that it’s my calling, but it’s a job, it pays the bills, and it’s a never ending source of amusement at my store. I don’t think I’d trade it for anything at this point. Unless of course I was going to be an eccentric millionaire.
Tags: child, first job, job, Mindbump, questions
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