Childhood goals - did you accomplish them?

[brooklyngirl]

I like this thread, and as usual, I agree with Jackie- these are more fun than grams of protein

 

[DianaCox]

I am fascinated with the number of us who wanted to be someone else - to have a completely different life (Supergirl, Isis, Chastity Bono, Native American) - we were already judging ourselves and our lives as inadequate and boring?

 

[Spiky Bugger]

I am fascinated with the number of us who wanted to be someone else - to have a completely different life (Supergirl, Isis, Chastity Bono, Native American) - we were already judging ourselves and our lives as inadequate and boring?

I wouldn't go that far...nothing quite that gloomy. I was just that other stuff seemed foreign and/or exotic because it was! Phil, my father's friend, passed through SoCal on his way from Boston to Kobe when I was a few months old. He took COLOR, new at the time, photos of me! He passed through again when I was about 8 years old and we became pen pals. He occasionally sent gifts...Geta Sandals and wooden dolls...when I got older, there was a sake set. I still have some of those, but I for sure have every letter he wrote, each festooned with a variety of different, colorful, Japanese stamps*.

I never saw Phil after that visit almost sixty years ago...but maybe my father did. He made one of his rare phone calls to me to get Phil's address before Dear Old Dad made one if his many business trips to Japan. (He...my father...was a big mucky-mucky for Toyota.)

Anyway...I wasn't DIS-satisfied with my life, but I was just crazy enough to want to go places and see things I had never seen. Sadly, when I was young and up for travel, I didn't have the money...and now that I could maybe find the money, travel has just become a trial.


*I'm pretty sure Dad never figured out that Phil, his best Army buddy, was gay!

 

[k9ophile]

Like 4KIds, I was told my chosen career was reserved for men. I wanted to be architect. My dad was vehemently opposed to my sister and me going to college, yet we were to marry a doctor, lawyer, etc. My sister pointed out that college might be a place to meet pre-med/pre-law students. So he reluctantly agreed, but would help only if we majored in education or nursing. Had to have a fall back job away from the pink collar ghetto in case our rich husbands died young don't you know?! As it is, my sister and I did get our degrees and married high school graduates. (Well, DH did get an Associate's in Mechanical Drafting, but Dad would have been disappointed anyway. An Mechanical Engineer? Perfect.)

 

[Spiky Bugger]

@k9ophile

I wanted to be an architect and of course, was told that was not a woman's job. To this day one of my favorite things to do is look at house plans.

And I am older than you and so you can imagine how weird I was with my Handy Andy Chemistry Set http://www.iride-online.com/ebay/DSC_4622.jpg and my super dooper Erector Set...the one with the stuff to make the ferris wheel AND it had a record player...except, please notice on the box cover where it says, "Hello, Boys!" http://boulderhistory.org/images/webimages/ErectorSetLabel.jpg

Well, at least in HS I managed to be the only girl in Drafting Class! LOL

 

[k9ophile]

I am fascinated with the number of us who wanted to be someone else - to have a completely different life (Supergirl, Isis, Chastity Bono, Native American) - we were already judging ourselves and our lives as inadequate and boring?

I wouldn't exactly call my life inadequate, but it definitely was boring. I think day dreaming is a very valuable use of time. It shows us possibilities, then if the fates align, we can go after them. Plus I remember having to pick a "career" when I was in 8th grade. WTF was that all about?

 

[k9ophile]

@k9ophile[/USERs


And I am older than you and so you can imagine how weird I was with my Handy Andy Chemistry Set and my super dooper Erector Set...the one with the stuff to make the ferris wheel AND it had a record player...except, please notice on the box cover where it says, "Hello, Boys!" [url]http://boulderhistory.org/images/webimages/ErectorSetLabel.jpg[/url]

Well, at least in HS I managed to be the only girl in Drafting Class! LOL

Before my two brothers were born, Dad bought us trucks, planes, Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, etc., so he'd could play with us. After my younger brothers came along we were persona non grata. Funny that my sister and I played with "boy" and "girl" toys, but my brothers never deviated from guy stuff. My nephew wanted a doll and as you can imagine, all hell done broke loose about that. Thank God my sister saw that he was trying to model after his dad. She got him a boy buddy doll. He was happy as could be and grew up to be a macho ********. Then my best friend's husband would not let her buy trucks and cars for her girls. That's when Aunt K9 stepped in for Christmas one year. Did they really think playing with the "wrong" toys could cause homosexuality?

 

[Spiky Bugger]

I wouldn't exactly call my life inadequate, but it definitely was boring. I think day dreaming is a very valuable use of time. It shows us possibilities, then if a the fates align, we can go after them. Plus I remember having to pick a "career" when I was in 8th grade. WTF was that all about?

Better us than them!

The summer prior to 9th grade (in my case, Catholic school, summer of 1959), we were TESTED and divided into four classes. "College A," "College B," "Business," and "General." And that was pretty much that. Almost no one moved "up" or "down" that hierarchy. And, of course, if you had been assigned to Business or General, you would not have taken any of the classes needed to get into college.

Of course...I REALLY didn't want to take Latin. I had already had Catholic elementary school, wherein we had to memorize the mass in Latin...even though only BOYS could be altar boys and therefore, girls would never have any reason to know that stuff, except to make sure the boys got it right...and so I needed to not be in Latin. I mean REALLY needed to not be in Latin. And I was 12 going on 13. And so I made my presence in Latin class painful for the nun teaching that class. Painful enough that they all voted to let me take whatever the Business track people were taking that hour...Intro to Business, I guess. So it was POSSIBLE to go from one track to another, but it did not cause the student to become popular with the faculty.

Hoc est fabula.

 

[k9ophile]

Oh, lordie! I forgot about those tracks. I had 3 relatives in our school system and the pressure was not only to be in college track, but the leader of that pack. No wonder I spent so many years in therapy.

 

[DianaCox]

As much as I hate Kaiser these days, I have to thank them in some way for me being who I am.

The night before my 9th birthday, I was feeling the shame of still believing that I might turn into Supergirl if I wished hard enough (or prayed - I didn't really believe in "god" but I might have been hedging my bets), and I promised myself if I didn't wake up as Supergirl, or with a magic wand, I was going to stop believing that childish stuff. And so, when I didn't wake up Supergirl that morning, the one thing I'd been wishing for for a long time was gone. And so it came to pass that when I blew out my birthday candles, I was bereft of anything to wish for. The kid across the street had just broken his arm (OK, I broke his arm when I knocked him over going for the basketball), so I decided to wish to never have broken bones or stitches.

The next day, we went to Doheny State Beach in Dana Point, and I sliced my foot open on a rock and needed stitches. Keep in mind, it was 1962. My parents brought me in, and the nurse who prepped me for the stitches was - A MAN!! And if that wasn't mind-boggling enough to a female child who had been devouring every Cherry Ames, ____ Nurse book she could lay her hands on, and who was thinking about being one, then - OMG - the doctor walked in, and she was a SHE!! Up until that moment, I did not realize that women could be doctors. They stitched up my foot what my brain was convulsing with the possibilities that had just become open to me.

You see, back in the day, Kaiser was founded in part because SOME doctors were not in it for the money, were not trying to get rich, didn't want to RUN a business and wanted to work for a business someone else ran, where they had backup and weren't on call all the time = they were doctors who just wanted to have some work-life balance as well as just practice medicine. And not surprisingly, a fair number of them were female physicians.

And thus when shortly thereafter, I read a story about a girl who had cancer and the scientists tried to find a cure for her, even though all the scientists in the story were men, I KNEW I could do that.

So, indirectly, Kaiser is responsible for me being a scientist.

 

[JackieOnLine]

my pastor told me women could only serve in the nursery -- first off, I don't really like kids --- from that moment on I never again willingly went to church

gah!

 

[hilary1617]

@k9ophile , I understand the pressure all too well. I was the product of a union of two overachieving academics. I was always being pulled out of class for one program or another or shipped to a different grade. Some fundamentals were taught in classes that I missed and had to learn them on the fly. (E.g. I was enrolled in calculus having never studied trigonometry, so I had to teach myself trig in short order.) I ended up skipping grades and ultimately matriculated at university instead of attending my junior and senior years of high school. I was expected to perform as well or better than classmates 4+ years my senior... I was always scrambling from behind but still had a magnifying glass held over my report card.

@Spiky Bugger , O sibili si ergo, fortibus es in ero. Nobili demis trux: sewatis enim? Cowsendux! and Semper ubi sub ubi. Si Prior to university, I was shipped off to Germany as an exchange student on fairly short notice (after 6 weeks of German lessons that began the day I was told, "Surprise, you're going to Germany"). I attended Gymnasium there and was surprised by their public education system where there are 4 or 5 (?) standard types of public secondary schools focused on career type and that the school / career path of a given student was determined in the 5th or 6th grade. (This blows me away even more today, as it is my son's 11th birthday and I can't imagine such decisions being made for him at this age, whereas at the time I was "in" that system, I was 13 and thought I was basically an adult. )

@DianaCox , you need to continue to believe six impossible things before breakfast, as the Queen once told Alice. Indeed you are Supergirl. Perhaps your superpowers are hidden in your cloak of invisibility when you look in the mirror, but the rest of us can see them, and they are manifold. Not every superhero flies or possesses extreme physical strength. Professor X exhibits supernatural intellect. Some superheroes on this very board bear super-kindness and uber-patience. In any case, I'm symbolically thanking the sharp rock at Dana Point and Kaiser for lighting the scientific path for you.

 

[Spiky Bugger]

@k9ophile , I understand the pressure all too well. I was the product of a union of two overachieving academics. I was always being pulled out of class for one program or another or shipped to a different grade. Some fundamentals were taught in classes that I missed and had to learn them on the fly. (E.g. I was enrolled in calculus having never studied trigonometry, so I had to teach myself trig in short order.) I ended up skipping grades and ultimately matriculated at university instead of attending my junior and senior years of high school. I was expected to perform as well or better than classmates 4+ years my senior... I was always scrambling from behind but still had a magnifying glass held over my report card.

@Spiky Bugger , O sibili si ergo, fortibus es in ero. Nobili demis trux: sewatis enim? Cowsendux! and Semper ubi sub ubi. Si Prior to university, I was shipped off to Germany as an exchange student on fairly short notice (after 6 weeks of German lessons that began the day I was told, "Surprise, you're going to Germany"). I attended Gymnasium there and was surprised by their public education system where there are 4 or 5 (?) standard types of public secondary schools focused on career type and that the school / career path of a given student was determined in the 5th or 6th grade. (This blows me away even more today, as it is my son's 11th birthday and I can't imagine such decisions being made for him at this age, whereas at the time I was "in" that system, I was 13 and thought I was basically an adult. )

@DianaCox , you need to continue to believe six impossible things before breakfast, as the Queen once told Alice. Indeed you are Supergirl. Perhaps your superpowers are hidden in your cloak of invisibility when you look in the mirror, but the rest of us can see them, and they are manifold. Not every superhero flies or possesses extreme physical strength. Professor X exhibits supernatural intellect. Some superheroes on this very board bear super-kindness and uber-patience. In any case, I'm symbolically thanking the sharp rock at Dana Point and Kaiser for lighting the scientific path for you.

Hilary...you helped me remember tbat our German landlord's pubescent son had already been tracked. THEY had decided for him. No choices! (Parents even had to get permission to take him along and miss two days of school for going to his big brother's wedding on Mallorca. That marching-along-in-lock-step doing-what-the-leader-says thing had not yet lost enough of its value in that society.)

And I started early and then skipped...so I finished HS five months after turning 16. The take-away for me was that HS "high achievers" are never old enough to drive to a football game. Pissed me the hell off. (And my sister, who had to repeat fourth grade...they did that back then...was old enough to drive her entire three years of HS and even took Mom to work and kept the car. Imagine my outrage! LOL)

 

[hilary1617]

@Spiky Bugger, There are definitely pros and cons of the German educational system. While the early-age tracking does appear a bit draconian, I do think we need more vocational programs in the U.S. We try to put everyone on the college track, but some of the best, most stable / least likely to be outsourced (and fairly highly paid) professions require different training.

I can totally relate to the driver's license issue - I wasn't old enough to drive until my junior year at university (though I tried desperately to hide my age from my classmates and possessed a fake ID so I had already found my way into campus bars by age 14...)

 

[Spiky Bugger]

@Spiky Bugger, There are definitely pros and cons of the German educational system. While the early-age tracking does appear a bit draconian, I do think we need more vocational programs in the U.S. We try to put everyone on the college track, but some of the best, most stable / least likely to be outsourced (and fairly highly paid) professions require different training.

I can totally relate to the driver's license issue - I wasn't old enough to drive until my junior year at university (though I tried desperately to hide my age from my classmates and possessed a fake ID so I had already found my way into campus bars by age 14...)

There was a reason you were there so young in the first place!

I just went to a HS 50-yr reunion and a couple of the guys remembered..."weren't you that kid who was 12?" I guess the word that I was jail bait, in spite of looking a lot older, got around!