Spaceball.

I walked into my daughter’s classroom and glanced at the walls. My daughter pointed me to a brand new project….each child took a picture with a piece of paper that said what they wanted to be when they grew up. I looked at Bug’s picture:

“A Dancer”

I turned to her…

“A dancer? You don’t want to be an animal doctor anymore? Who is going to take care of Meatball if she gets athlete’s foot? What if Penny’s tongue gets stuck in a door or something? The dogs are depending on you..”

She laughed.

“I want to be a dancer now.”

“Ok, you will be an awesome dancer…so awesome that when animals see it, they will be healed.”

“Daddy!” She walked away to talk to a friend.

I looked at the other pictures and saw the regular dreams….policeman…fireman….doctor. But one stood out to me:

“An astronaut who plays baseball on the moon.” Wow…now that’s a career. I looked around for our future astronaut baseball player.

“Hey dude, that’s an awesome job man. Being our first astronaut playing baseball on the moon? So you would be playing Spaceball.”

“Yup, and I know I am already good at it because I can swing a bat in slow motion…because everything is slower in space.”

He showed me how slow he could swing a bat.

“Whoa…that WAS slow. Your baseball name could be Buster Slow-sey.”

Our dreams are always changing. I didn’t realize what my passion was until a few years ago. Can you imagine a world where we got to be the first thing we wanted to be? Our world would be filled with nothing but cowboys, policemen/policewomen, princesses, and ninjas. I remember when I first registered for classes as a freshman in college. I had not clue what to major in. I didn’t want to be an engineer or be in business. So I elected the one job that sounded the coolest.

Telecommunications.

What? I didn’t even know what that was. In fact, whenever anyone asked me what Telecommunications was my definition would change…because I wasn’t even sure what it was.

“Yeah, telecommunications…that’s the people behind the television…not in front of the television.”

Nope.

“Oh telecommunications, it’s the study and history of communicating through television…from when people use to just listen to radio and then black and white TV.”

Wrong again. This is what it is.

Telecommunications: the branch of technology dealing with communication over a distance by cable, telegraph, telephone, or broadcasting.

Telegraph? Are you serious? I would have had a career that would deal with the telegraph? Like using Morse code?

..yeah, top notch technology.

Luckily, that fake dream didn’t last.