What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

When you ask a child what he or she wants to be, they always answer with jobs that have simple, one-word names that everyone has heard of. Ballerina. Firefighter. Astronaut. Teacher. Policeman. Doctor. No little kid ever says, "I want to be an actuary when I grow up." Or Public Information Manager, or Financial Advisor, or Amortization Clerk. Or thousands of other career opportunities that their little brains have never even heard of and couldn’t wrap themselves around if they had. Yet many of those little children are doomed to become amortization clerks or insurance salespeople or dental hygienists.

I remember going to the dentist when I was in the beginning of my career in publishing. The hygienist was cleaning my teeth, and–as they are wont to do–she was asking me questions while she alternately scraped my teeth with a medieval instrument of torture and blasted them with frigid water. Why do they do this (ask questions, that is, not the scraping and blasting)? Can’t they see that this is not a good time for us to be trying to answer questions? They should just develop some kind of stand-up routine that they can perform for you, their captive–and mute–audience. It could prepare them for a second career.

Anyway, she had asked me what I did for a living. I told her that I was a proofreader. She asked what that was, and I explained to her that I read magazine articles, looking for and marking mistakes. She said, "Ugh!" in real disgust. "I could never do that! What an awful job!"

So, the next time I could speak without drooling, I said, "This, from someone who sticks her hands in other people’s mouths and scrapes six months’ worth of dirt off their teeth? Good grief!" And she said, "Oh! I love my job! It’s the best! But reading all day long and having to correct the mistakes? Ugh."

And that is why some of the kindergartners whom you talk to about their future jobs will end up happily becoming dental hygienists. Or, worse, apparently, proofreaders.