When I grow up I want to be.........

Me in the 80's

I never did know what I wanted to be. I went through phases growing up. The first job I ever remember wanting to do was working as a car mechanic. I had a fascination for cars. As a child I collected the cards from the tea packets (who remembers those?). Cars were my favourite though I collected whatever the latest lot were. I even collected toy cars and remember my gold Jaguar,m running it up and down in the fire place (not when the fire was on!). When I was older I nearly signed up for a car maintenance class. At that time I didn't even drive! But I always had my head under the bonnet of my dad's Morris Minor and he showed me how to check the oil and where the spark plugs were and how they were removed. I knew about fan belts and alternators and where to find the jack and spare tyre. Eventually I took driving lessons and passed first time. My dad helped me buy my first and only car, but I soon realised that I didn't much like driving. I got far too anxious. I sold it nine month later. I was sad to see it go as I lovely looked after it but it was the right thing to do.

I shared my dad's car and even when I married and had the boys I would borrow it sometimes and take us all out. But when my dad became too ill to drive and he offered me the car I refused. The car was rusting and we didn't have much money. So it was sold. Do I miss not having a car? No not really. The boys grew up using the bus and train and walked everywhere whereas their friends were driven everywhere and objected to walking anywhere. Now as 60 plus travellers the hubby and I have our Senior Citizen's Railcard and we get good use out of it, plus we have free travel through the London area. Strangely neither of the boys have a car and don't seem that bothered. We are lucky where we are with bus stops down the road and we live between two train stations.

I seem to have digressed! I was talking about what I wanted to do when I grew up. Okay they come over like this. At 15 I was crazy about babies. I'm not sure whether that meant I wanted to be a mother but in the end I was 34 before I had my first child. That is a job in itself that's for sure! I also wanted to be a librarian and an estate agent! There was a brief yearning to be a dispensing chemist some years after I left school but I didn't have any qualifications from school so that wasn't going to happen. I then fancied a job as a sound engineer. I've always loved music and had an interest in production. I even wrote to a local studio asking if there were any vacancies as a junior - making the tea, whatever! I never got a reply.

As an adult I still didn't seem to know what I wanted to do. I was interested in too many things. I once applied for a job in a Private Detective Agency. I think I would have got it but the atmosphere was awful and I knew I couldn't work there, For a while I thought I might study law (I worked for years as a legal secretary) and in my 40's I was asked if I'd considered training for the Priesthood. No, don't laugh. I also liked the idea of working for the Police (and now I'm obsessed by crime, procedure and forensics!).

These days if I was starting out again I'd be looking for a job somewhere in the arts and librarian might still be on that list, or working in a book shop, or maybe I'd still hanker after that Police job! When I was a school all I was interested in was sport. I loved running and netball. I still love watching athletics. It's something else I wish I'd taken more seriously. I'm still competitive and enjoy playing badminton and especially short tennis every week during term time with the over 50's group. I hope I'm still playing at 80 like one very good player we have.

A selfie (2017)

Of course I'd always been interested in writing. It has been an on/off thing throughout my life. I still have all my exercise books with my stories and a few novels. Yes, some of them are pretty bad. When I was 14 I started penpalling and I still do that. One friend I have known since I was 18. We only write at Christmas now but we're still friends. So I wrote loads of letters and I've also written loads of song lyrics and stories. After my dad died I got into poetry writing as a way to cope with my emotions. I'm still writing and about four years ago I realised this is what I want to do. It's always been there but it's taken me this long to find out. Right now I'm having a love/hate relationship with writing but I can't see that I will ever stop. I've always invented stories. Some were in my head and never written, yet even now I remember bits of them. They were my alternative world growing up. Even so, I wish I'd known all those years ago. I envy those who knew from an early age what they wanted to do. They set their goals at school and went for it and they make it. I was always a late developer and got distracted easily, chopping and changing from one hobby to another with an initial obsession and then dropping it. These days I have more stickability and writing (like reading and music) has remained. All I can say is that my interests, brief or obsessional have certainly come into their own now when I write! I have life experience and I continue to gather up 'stuff' as I go. I never know when it might come in useful in a story!

So, dear reader, did you know what you wanted to be when your grew up? Did you do that or something else? Would you change anything if you knew then what you know now?

When I Grow Up To Be  Man (thought this was a bit apt!)