what do you want to be when you grow up?

ask me that now and i'll tell you that i don't want to grow up. like peter pan and the lost boys, i want to hold onto my childhood and never let it go. the problem is that i've already done a lot of growing up and even more is inevitable.

ask me that now and i'll continue by saying that i want to be a college professor. that's my goal: to indoctrinate a new generation into my way of thinking. i haven't always wanted to be a professor though...

as alluded to in a previous post, one of my first ambitions in life was to be a triceratops. that was because they were the coolest of all dinosaurs. my friends and i would pretend we were dinosaurs in our backyards. i'd always be the triceratops disemboweling those around me. as i got older though, i realized that it was impossible to change into a dinosaur and had to wish for something more realistic.

as i got older, my influences were michael j. fox movies, specifically back to the future and teen wolf. putting the two together, i wanted to be a time-traveling werewolf. just think about it. not only would i get to visit all sorts of times and places in history and kick it with all the great people of the past (like bill and ted), i would also have fangs, be incredible at basketball, and get hot babes!

with a pencil and my spiral notebook, i drew out the plans to make a time-traveling bike (there was no way i could afford a delorean and even if i could, i wouldn't know how to drive it). the plans were rather complicated, but the bike eventually began working a little. i was never able to travel back in time, but would usually find myself seconds (or sometimes even minutes) into the future after getting off my bike. unfortunately, i have since lost the plans. all i can remember was a box with a red button between the handlebars.

becoming a werewolf was much more difficult. the only way i knew of was to either be bitten by a werewolf or be the child of a werewolf (like michael j. fox). i really didn't want to be bitten by a werewolf. when i was 4 or 5 a dog bit my right butt cheek and it hurt like hell. a werewolf bite has got to be much worse than that. and i did not want to know what it would be like. my only other hope was that my dad was a werewolf (thats because werewolfism is passed on with the y chromosome). my dad seemed to be a good candidate for a werewolf. his ears had a slight point to them. he seemed to have abnormally sharp canine teeth. he was also pretty hairy. all signs of a werewolf. i kept track of him during full moon nights to see if anything happened. nothing ever did. my dreams and hopes disappeared.

since those days, other occupations have passed through my mind as something to be when i grew up. astronaut. firefighter. archaeologist. geologist. homeless drunk/crack addict. weatherman. professional football player. accountant. commercial artist. computer programmer.

while nearly settling with the last of these, i found myself thinking about how much i would have hated a job spend day after day writing out code and how different i was from all the nerds in my computer science classes. philosophy had started to become a bit of a passion of mine and i decided to give it a try. in the process, i discovered a new nerdness to embrace and something that i think i could find myself doing for a long time.

so here i am. growing up. getting older. trying to be more mature and responsible. but at the same time, holding onto the child in me that'll keep me feeling young.