When Noah asked me how I chose my career I was caught off-guard. Noah is a great kid; he’s 19 and attends community college in upstate Florida. He is my brother’s ex-step-grandson but he maintains close ties with my brother, who is really the only father figure the kid ever knew. Noah’s father was a petty loan shark and his mother was petty drug dealer and both parents were in and out of jail Noah’s entire childhood.
Noah is a serious kid and now that I am middle-aged and respectable I could hardly tell him that when I was his age my career goals included finding a job that allowed me to a) drink heavily; b) smoke lots of dope and c) sleep late every morning. Additionally since I resent authority, don’t work well in groups and distrust everyone I’m hardly an appropriate role model for a young man trying to figure out his career path.
So I gave Noah an evasive answer but he persisted: “How did you know what you wanted to do?” he pressed.
“Well,” I said carefully, “career goals change with time.” This is very true; for example when I was in second grade I wanted to be a priest, mainly because Sister Letitia told me that only priests went to heaven, but then I got promoted to third grade and by then I wanted to be a pilot, mainly because the older brother I adored was in the Air Force.
By eighth grade I wanted desperately to be one of Gladys Knight’s Pips. I figured that since I don’t have even an ounce of talent that would be a safe career move since clearly none of the Pips had any more talent than I did, and I thought I’d enjoy the show biz life.
In high school I wanted to be an architect until I discovered that I would have to learn how to use a slide rule; and then I wanted to be a doctor until I realized I would have to take science classes; I wanted to be a realtor until I learned I would have to work Sundays.
By the time I was in college my main goal was simply to graduate; I was pursuing a degree in liberal arts and it increasingly appeared that my career path was likely to end as “Waiter at Bennigan’s” in an era where all of my high school friends were pursuing MBAs and law degrees.
After college I spent some time teaching school, which is when I discovered I hate kids and six whole weeks as a flight attendant which is when I discovered I hate adults. I clerked in a pet store for a while but the birds would attack me so mercilessly that I literally fled, in my apron, mid-shift. Next, in sheer desperation, I took a job as a trainer in a gym where people would take one look at my 6’3″, 135 pound physique and hire one of the juiced-up muscle heads instead. This allowed me plenty of time to wash the mirrors.
By this time my career goal had been reduced to “not sleeping in my car” but one day at the gym I met a friend from high school who said her father was looking to hire a pleasant person with a college degree who would work cheap, a skill set that was tailor made for me. That was 35 years ago and I am still not sleeping in my car.
Now as I looked at Noah’s earnest young face I sighed. “A job is like a relationship,” I said. “When you find the right one you’ll know.”