My childhood dreams. |
"What's that?" they'd ask.
"They ride around on horses with lassos and herd cows," I'd explain cheerfully.
"Oh, you want to be a cowboy!" which made sense, because that was the kind of thing little boys wanted to be.
"No a gaucho!" I'd insist.
They would sigh, wishing they hadn't started a conversation with a little boy that was taking too long and preventing them from re-filling their gin & tonic. As an adult I've learned that conversations with clever children are over-rated.
"What you said sounds like a cowboy. Is a gaucho a word you made up for cowboy?"
"No, it's an Argentine cowboy. They ride the pampas!"
At this point the adult would nod and wander off. If they asked why I wanted to be an Argentine cowboy, I was ready with answers. (I liked the outfits and wanted to live somewhere in a place where water went the opposite way down the drain.) But they never asked.
Anyway, that dream died when I realized I'd have to learn Spanish and that seemed pretty hard. So I decided to be an archeologist. Playing in dirt and discovering treasure seemed like a good career (this was before Raiders of the Lost Ark.) But then I learned archaeologists have to go to school for a long-time and often have to spend their time in bug-infested environments - and rarely find treasures and get rich.
Now, 35 years later, I'm still at a loss for what I want to do when I grown up.
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