The conditioning began at birth. Holding me in their arms, they dreamed of my future, examining its seemingly endless potential. Would their new baby girl conquer the world or discover new ones? Would she reach for the stars or land on the moon?
As soon as I was old enough to comprehend the possibilities, they told me I could become anything I wanted to be. My teachers caught on soon after pre-school, filling my five-year-old head with suggestions for the rest of my life. Would I become a ballerina, a police woman, an architect or a toy maker? Perhaps, they suggested, I should try engineering, teaching, sculpting or cooking.
Patronizing adults taunted my innocence each time they asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. Brainwashed with this idea that I could become anything at all, I responded to their questions with a vast assortment of answers. Before finishing grade school, my potential resume included a stint at Disney World, a degree in aerospace travel, president of the United States and Supreme Ruler of the Universe. Each answer I gave was met with a cynical smirk and hearty chuckle as adults reveled in my naïveté. They knew it was a lie.
Though charming in theory, everyone knows it's impossible to follow just any career of your choosing. But I believed them. Far after the magic of Santa Claus, I still held fast to this one promise. I didn't realize that while filling my head with ideas of what I could do with my life, no one thought to point out all of the things that I couldn't. No one told me you had to have grace and strength in order to be a ballerina. As I fumble over the size-11 feet that make it impossible to climb out of two-door cars while maintaining any scrap of integrity, it's clear I wasn't born to be a dancer. They failed to mention that culinary masterpieces don't come from a can, or that talent isn't making a week's worth of dinners without washing a single dish. I wasn't born to be a chef.
With my first report card, my mom had to have seen that I wasn't going to become an engineer or an architect. I couldn't apply apples and oranges to anything but fruit salad. My art teachers thought all of my projects were abstracts, no matter how many times I explained they were people. I wouldn't have cared if Barbie lived among the sugary dust of a cereal box or a Malibu Dream House Supreme. My solution to every problem in my seventh grade technology class was to add more glue.
Chemistry was just another class where I could set things on fire or create small explosions and still get an "A." Even as I grew, parents, teachers, family and friends still encouraged the lie. "Keep your options open," I was told. "You never know." But I do know, and I've come to terms with the limitations of my future.
Thankful for the architects, chefs, engineers and mathematicians of the world, I gladly succumb to my fate of "liberal arts girl." I can read a book or write poetry; please leave the logarithms to someone else. I have no doubt, though, that one day I will hold a child in my arms and dream of her future. As soon as she is able to comprehend the possibilities, I'll add to the endless cycle. Squatting to her eye level, I'll plant the seed and ask, "what do you want to do when you grow up?"
FIND A BUSINESS
