10-year-old certainty

I still greet my dad with, “hey, old man.” It started as a joke sometime around graduation from college. As a military family we are Southern by inclination if not always location and respect was an expectation in any interaction with someone older than you. Hell, I’m almost 40 and I still pepper my language with “ma’am” and “sir”. 

“Old man” isn’t respectful, but crossing into true adulthood, where I’d pay my own bills and go my own way, it was allowed. The moniker was taken as I intended, a term of endearment, and a gentle jab. I didn’t really think my dad was old but he was older than me so…old man ribbing it was. 

His response was always, “better than the alternative,” a nod to the idea that getting old was better than being dead. I have to agree with that perspective. Dad has lots of thoughts on aging. When I chastised my parents for their inability to remember when and how long they remained engaged they both told me to, “go ask your aunt Sunday.”  At that point they’d been married about 25 years (now its 45 years and they really don’t remember).

“How can you not remember?” I asked, incredulous. “Keep living and you’ll see,” my dad responded with a smile.

He was right. There are any number of things I don’t remember now. Things I was certain there was no need to write down because – who forgets important things. Apparently forgetting runs in my family or maybe it is my age bracket; either way, if you ask me now what 10-year-old me wanted to be when I grew up I’m at a loss. 

The military brat within has to first do calculations about where we were living so that I can at least picture my life. It sounds silly to anyone who hasn’t moved much, but in my family we always start with “where were we?” as grounding.  At 10 we had left Florida and were living in Texas.  That means the Hinkle house. 

If we were in the Hinkle house than I was hanging with the Dudettes – a group of friends that for some reason that was a cool way to identify ourselves (whatever…we were 10). But that’s where I draw a blank. I remember sleep-overs and walking home from school. I remember my Girl Scout Leader and cutting my finger while chopping cabbage, and nightmares about my fourth grade teacher Mr. Phiester.  I do not remember what I wanted to be when I grew up. I’m not sure I thought about being anything other than a 10-year-old. 

Fast-forward a few years to when I was 12 or so and I remember wanting to be everything…I concocted a way to design houses using rooms that fit together like puzzle pieces so people could decide what their homes looked like, I had an advertising sketchbook filled with imaginary products and the marketing plan for each one, I constructed a paper “movie projector” and sketched out “films”, I considered child psychology, I wrote plays for me and my twin cousin to act out with our Cabbage Patch Kids, and I wrote poetry: 

the sun and the moon go to war each day and the one that wins is the one that stays;but he doesn’t stay long ‘cuz the other comes along and its war all over again.

I don’t remember thinking I was going to “be” any of those things. Not really. In my mind, I was those things. In my mind I was revolutionizing architecture and selling amazing (if fictitious) products and writing moving poetry. 

In my 10-year-old brain, as far as I can remember it now in my 40-year-old one, there was no need to think too heavily about what might be in light of what already was.

That differs greatly from where I sit now. 

Now I know architecture has a lot of math and, because I was math-phobic in high school and college, it vanished from my “could be” horizon. Psychology, especially of the child persuasion, struck me as depressing, and writing took a more utilitarian turn – I majored in journalism and had a short stint as a journalist through college. All of those things I was somehow faded away.

The work I do now did not exist in my 10-year-old brain. I didn’t know about non-profits (although my 10-year-old self knew about profit…I once made $22 off a box $1.49 box of brownie mix selling slices door-to-door) or international aid/development work. International development was my job until just a few years ago. And what I’ve transitioned to, working stateside in violence prevention, did not register at all when I was 10 because I didn’t know anything of violence. Lucky me. 

More than what I’ve chosen to do professionally in my adult life, the greatest differences between me-way-back-when and me-inching-up-in-age-now, is certainty. 

My 10-year-old self was pretty confident. The things I fancied doing I was certain I did well. So certain, that in my early days of writing I would cry big raindrop tears when given any critique on what I’d produced. And while I’m glad I learned to take critique as a tool for improvement rather than an assault on my talent, I do miss the certainty that what I offer the world is something it needs and will be better for having. In the absence of that certainty I find myself asking now what I never asked then, what the heck am I going to be when I grow up?

Courtesy of the DailyPost writing prompt:Ballerina Fireman Astronaut Movie Star.