When I Grow Up

My daughter asked me playfully, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I said, “I want to be a successful author.”

Her expression suggested deep disappointment. I think she expected me to say something that sounds more exciting, like “astronaut” or “paleontologist.” But I really do want to be a successful author…which is kind of what I already am.

But, she made the mental adjustment and then asked me, “Did you start writing when you were twelve?”

I don’t know where she gets these numbers. She plucks them out of the air as though they make perfect sense. Maybe I’ve talked about something I wrote when I was twelve, and she remembers it and I don’t?

I said, “No, honey, I was much younger than that. I was only eight years old when I first published something I’d written.”

Her eyes bugged out.

So I went to my files and retrieved my “author’s copies,” carefully kept for all those years. The work is full of childish naivete, but it’s not illiterate by any stretch.

Don’t give up on those dreams, friends. Sometimes you really do grow up to be what you wanted to be all along.