I am really glad I am a junior. I have some senior friends who do not know what they are doing next year, and I am really glad I am not one of them. My favorite song is “Dammit” by Blink 182. The chorus to that song is, “I guess this is growin’ up.” Watching my friends get ready to embark upon jobs, school or whatever could possibly come after college has made me stop and consider what “growing up” really means. I have come to the conclusion that it means finding out what you want to be when you grow up. I have absolutely no idea what that is, and that is why I am really glad I am a junior. In the past I have had ideas about what I wanted to be, but now that the time is approaching I am not really sure I want to be anything.
The first thing that I ever remember wanting to be was a garbage man. In the town where I was born we had the coolest garbage trucks. There were five carts that accompanied each mother truck. The truck would pull up to a block, and all the little carts would scoot around to pick up trash and then return to the mother truck. I used to get up early to watch the garbage men on trash pick up day. However, then I saw the Van Halen video for “Right Now.” Sanitation workers were featured under the caption,”Right now someone is working too hard for minimum wage.”
Next I turned towards being a paramedic. I was in love with this old show called Emergency. It was about two guys named Johnny and Roy. I wanted to be Roy, because he had the steady girlfriend and was just more laid back. There was also an episode where Johnny got bit by a rattlesnake, and I didn’t like that. However, this dream was also short-lived. In second grade something happened that would change my life forever.
I played little league baseball. It was so fun. I fell in love with the game of baseball. I wanted to be a major league baseball player more than anything in the world. I worked really hard, because I wasn’t the best kid out there. But I had seen the movie Back to the Future, and the moral of that story is you can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it. That first season I did not get a single hit. I was, however, hit by a few pitches, but that was about it. When I got to high school, I made the first-year baseball team. Now I should probably say that I made the team as the first base coach and bullpen catcher, but my hero, Orel Hershiser, didn’t even make his first-year team but later won the Cy Young Award. I figured that if I were ahead of him I was headed for Cooperstown (The Baseball Hall of Fame) without a doubt. However, sophomore year I didn’t even get to coach first base. I made the team, but I caught the bullpen. I had one at bat. I fouled out to end our season. I also threw batting practice. It was somewhere in here that I realized that I was not going to be a professional baseball player. I was a little sad that day. If I wrote a song about that day it would be called “The Day the Baseball Died,” like the day the music died for Don McLean.
Then I decided I wanted to be a lawyer or maybe an FBI agent, since many agents have a law degree. I think I decided on this when we had a mock trial in my American History class. I used impeccable logic, great rhetoric, a little lying and a lot of jury tampering to successfully defend Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis on treason charges. That took me right up until the end of high school. I was one of those kids who are a dime a dozen in the SFS. You know … the ones that everyone at their high school thought were going to be the President of the United States. My plan was to be a lawyer, a member of the House of Representatives, a Senator and finally the President.
Then I met some real lawyers. I met some people who wanted to be lawyers. I met a lot of people who wanted to be politicians. Now don’t get me wrong. I like a lot of these people. I just don’t want to be one of them. It is sort of like the New Englanders I know. I really like a lot of them. I just would never want to be one. So that experience left me at a loss for what to do. But I did some thinking.
I decided that I would just have to marry someone who was rich or who had a really good job, and then I would stay home and be Mr. Mom. After all, I like kids. I am really good with them. They love me. This job would be my ideal one. I was coming to Georgetown to get my MR degree. I am afraid I have some bad news though.
This spring break I went home, and my parents took off for a while leaving me in charge of my little brothers who are in elementary and high school school. I realized that I was not cut out to be Mr. Mom when I woke up before 7 a.m. to get them breakfast and take them to school. I was hating life. I remember saying to myself, “I hate this.” So now I am sort of back where I started, not really knowing what to do. I guess I am just glad I am a junior. I guess this is growin’ up, too. Dammit.
