Weekend Assignment #77: Studs Terkel Scalzi

For those who aren't aware of the facts of life, John M Scalzi is an author, a journalist, a husband and father, a geek and is the proprietor of several blogs, as well as serving as the "blogfather" for AOL's Journals Community. He hosts a weekly meme, i.e. each week he poses a question. If you'd to play along and aren't an AOL member just grab yourself a free AIM account and that will give you access to leave a link to your efforts in the comments to John's AOL journal,By The Way. Come on, you know you want to! Just click the link below to get started.

Weekend Assignment #77: When I Grow Up

Based on a discussion I was having with my daughter, your short and sweet weekend assignment: Weekend Assignment #77: What do you want to be when you grow up? This can be answered one of two ways: You can answer by saying what you wanted to be when you were a kid, or, you can answer by saying what you still want to be, one day, one way or another. It's up to you. Extra Credit: What did your parents want you to be when you grew up?

Dear John,

I do remember so well the long conversations with Matt and Kate as we drove back and forth from Bangor, Maine to Burlington, Vermont on school vacations, holidays and other events marking the venue change in our children of divorced parents' lives. And one of our favorite topics, good for a hundred miles or so, was the perennial question, “What do I want to be when I grow up?”

Farther back in history, I can recall the same discussions between my father and I as a teen when he really expected a straight answer and with my mother when i was an adolescent and earlier, when the flights of fancy were allowed free rein. After all, I started answering that question almost as soon as I could talk and THAT was more than a half century ago!

So, while I've had ideas about being a fire fighter, or a mariner, or a race car driver, or a truck driver, or helping people or a ski bum, my mother used to suggest that I was perhaps better cut out to be a lawyer or politician, due to my predilection for arguing. Later, my father would initially reinforce that assessment, but subsequent to Woodstock, came to the conclusion that I had way too much wanderlust (and other forms of lust) to make a partner in a law firm. He tried to direct me into the travel industry at first and then, when I showed some potential for becoming a marine engineer, he actively encouraged that, in the form of recruiting material from the Coast Guard appearing in my mail. That is, until we had a vessel sink and the thought of swimming out of a sinking ship from the bowels of the engine room haunted my sleep as well as my waking dreams, leaving me a worse wreck than the vessel that tore her bottom open. Then he was supportive of me getting out of the industry entirely.

So, if mother had had her druthers, I'd be a miserable lawyer somewhere, while my father would have had me working in a travel agency. Me? I've been a firefighter, a Fire Chief, an EMT, construction worker, a cook in an Austrian restaurant, making weiner schnitzel und hassenfeffer, a dishwasher at a ski area, a radio announcer and news producer, an oiler and marine engineer, driven trucks for others and rallyed for myself, fixed cars and boo-boos for fun and profit, inspected thousands of buildings, reviewed thousands of plans and dealt with thousands of people during one of the most stressful things the average Jane and Joe can do in a lifetime – build a house. I've taught rudimentary computer skills and trained folks in basic dog obedience methodology...

And I STILL don't know what I want to do when I grow up.

Keep Krissy and Athena safe and happy, the animals in kibble and yourself in hock. Complacency doesn't become you, boy. And so it goes...

wil