May Secret Subject Swap

Welcome to take two of May's Secret Subject Swap. This week 11 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else, and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.




Below are links to all the sites now featuring  Secret Subject Swap posts. So sit back, grab a cuppa and check them all out.

Baking In A Tornado
The Insomniac's Dream
Dinosaur Superhero Mommy
The Pursuit of Normal
The Momisodes
Searching for Sanity
Black Sheep Mom
Moore Organized Mayhem
Daily Dose of Damn
Tiny Steps Mommy
Mom Rants and Comfy Pants

My subject is When you were asked as a child what you "want to be when you grow up" what did you say? Are you doing what you thought you would be doing? and it was submitted by Tiny Steps Mommy

When I was a kid, what I wanted to be when I grew up changed fairly regularly. At various times I wanted to be a writer, a nurse, an actor, a beautician, a librarian, a singer and Mrs Johnny Depp. Now there are slight problems with wanting to become every one of those things, which I shall go through with you guys now, in list form, because hey, who doesn't love a nice tidy list?

A writer
I love to write. I have loved it for as long as I can remember it. The problem is I hate my writing. I write here as often as I can, and while I think some of the stuff I put on this website is freaking hilarious, I'm always terrified I'm the only person who enjoys it. And writing here is actually pretty easy because I'm just writing about stuff I know. This is just like the most public diary I have ever owned. The minute you ask me to write a piece of fiction my brain goes into overdrive with every big and fancy word it knows, and before long, the reader needs a thesaurus just to understand that I'm talking about a meadow. My dad suffers from the same disease, except he doesn't proof read his stuff as well as I do, resulting in one descriptive piece where he described a field as "verdant, emerald". (For anyone who doesn't understand the irony, he just said green, green.) Every time I think of this piece of writing I start singing the green green grass of home. Now I actually took a creative writing class with my mum when I was about 12 or 13. I was the only child there in a room full of brilliant adults, my mum included, who could write with the best of them. One or two of these wonderful people have actually gone on to have works published, which makes me verdant emerald with envy, but their success is well deserved. I on the other hand struggled to make sure every piece I wrote didn't turn into an essay, and I ended up giving up on my dreams of being a famous writer.

A nurse
I come from a long line of nurses. My mum was a nurse, all of my aunts are nurses, one of my uncles is a nurse, my grandma was a nurse, my great grandma was a bartender. (That has nothing to do with anything, I just think it's cool.) A lot of my best friends from high school went on to become nurses, and one of them even works in the maternity ward of the local hospital where Miss K and I spent 3 weeks after she was born. It was nice having a familiar face around, especially during the long nights where hospitals can be pretty lonely and scary. But it takes a very special person to be a nurse.  For one, you can't be squeamish. I am a sympathetic vomiter, and I can't even watch a scene on television where there is puking. I've watched Youtube videos where people squeeze pimples, or pull cactus spikes out of various body parts, and while it is absolutely fascinating to see, I couldn't actually bear to see it in person. Of course when you have no choice but to cope with stuff like that, I'm OK, but I turn to jelly as soon as the crisis is over and I can go back to being a sook. So that ruled out becoming a nurse.

An actor
So from grade 3 to about year 11 I was convinced I could become an actor. I even got all the enrollment information from the National Institute of Dramatic Arts so that I knew what I had to study in order to be accepted there. And then I got to year 12 drama and hated it so much I decided I never wanted to become an actor ever. I think I suddenly realised that I didn't enjoy making a fool of myself in public anymore, which kind of makes acting a bad career move.

A beautician
I actually held on to this dream well into my twenties, and even though I couldn't even get my local TAFE to accept me into their course, I went and took a couple of short courses that would help me get my foot in the door. But then I learned that the world of beauty salons is actually pretty cutthroat, and being a plus size beautician is not an asset when you are trying to get established. So I could have tried anyway, and put in a lot of hard work just to be accepted, but I realised quickly that I didn't have that kind of fight in me.

A librarian
I love the library. I have ever since I was a kid and mum used to take us up every few weeks to pick out some new books. I decided given how much I love libraries and books in general, then a librarian would be a good career. Then I found out you have to go to university to become a librarian. Why the heck do you need to do that? Does it seriously take 4 years to learn the Dewey Decimal system?? Do they have a special class to master the art of shushing loud patrons? Can I take an elective in the best disapproving stare to give to someone when they return a book in a terrible condition? I was not going to spend thousands of dollars and years out of my life learning those things, so that put an end to my dreams of being a librarian. (Apologies to any librarians reading this now, I'm sure the course was entirely necessary for you all, and you must now all be masters at wheeling trollies full of books around bookshelves.)

A singer
Now I spent years thinking I was a terrible singer. In school musicals I would hum quietly or just mouth the words if I could get away with it, and when we sang the national anthem every Monday at school I would sit there quietly mouthing what I thought the words were hoping that no one noticed that I was stuffing up our country's song every single week. In year ten my music teacher pulled me aside and told me I had to come and get singing lessons with him every single week. I thought it was because I was so terrible that I needed extra help, but apparently he thought I had a good voice and needed guidance to make sure I was using it properly. So for the next 3 years I had weekly voice lessons, and I joined the school choir and the blues band and got lead singing roles in the school musicals. But I still didn't think my voice was all that good. Which is why when I left school and there was no longer a whole team of music teachers propping me up every day, I quickly gave up on any illusions that I could be a singer. And now the only person who hears me sing with any regularity is Miss K, and she quickly tells me to shut up as soon as I begin. So I guess that answers that question once and for all.

Mrs Johnny Depp
Ok this one should be pretty obvious, but just in case you can't tell why this one would never work, let's compare the two of us.

 

Johnny Depp

 

Me

It's simple really. Until I look like Vanessa Paradis, I'll just have to settle on dreaming of becoming the next Mrs David Boreanaz.

 

That, I want that.

Well that's all from me, thank you to Karen from Baking In A Tornado for letting me be a part of the May Secret Swap, and thank you also to Nicole from Tiny Steps Mommy for my subject for this week. Be sure to check out the rest of the bloggers before you leave here today, in that list is some of the funniest and most brilliant bloggers I know, so you're in for a real treat.