What Did You Want To Do When You Were A Kid?

Become The President And An Astronaut, Right?

When I was a youth, I developed a mental list of things I would like to do. It wasn't so much a "What I want to be when I grow up" thing as it was a list of accomplishments. I suppose most people would call it a bucket list now. I tend to associate that as things you do when you know death is imminent, but anyway. The point is, I had aspirations once, man.

Funny thing is, I still do, even at 51. However, all of what I will proceed to share are no longer a part of my personal "To Do" list. They are things I've either grown out of, have no further interest in, or figure I've past the point of no return on.

With that, and in no particular order, I present to you my list of things I wanted to do in my life.

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You're listening to KRZY 1650 AM, your station for the finest elevator music.

Radio DJ

Me and sound have a thing going on. Which makes my relationship with the written word a little strained (she's jealous), but hey, what are you going to do?

I grew up when AM/FM was still pretty prominent. I missed out on the golden era of radio with the different dramas and other kinds of radio programs, but I always thought I'd be a perfect fit for radio. My voice isn't as low as some other men who would do it, but it's more in the cadence, really. You can make yourself sound like you know what you're talking about if you talk in a certain way.

One of the communications classes I took the year I went to college included a 15-minute radio spot, where we played songs, commercials, and had some kind of filler in between. It was awesome. Turn tables, microphone, volume and other meters. The equipment was from the 50s (they'd moved the modernized campus radio station somewhere else), so it was old and clunky, but still a blast to use.

I ended up taking a desk lamp my parents had bought me to fashion a mike stand with. There was a point I needed to be able to talk and do something else (change records maybe) at the same time, and without a way to hold the mike in front of me, I couldn't do it. So, I took the top part off the desk lamp (shade and bulb), then used the movable arm stand and some duct tape to create my mike boom. Awesome!

If I remember right, I got an A- on that project which was second in the class behind a student who already had a campus gig because he had the deep radio guy voice. Still very proud of that accomplishment!

Professional Body Builder

Laughing yet? Glad I could make your day. However, if you could see my current physical condition, you'd probably laugh more.

Back in my teens, when I was in the best shape of my life, it wasn't as much of a stretch. I'm shorter than the average male, but I've always had a stocky build. During this period, people would ask me if I wrestled, just because I looked like a wrestler. Alas, all I ever did in high school was play basketball and flirt with cross country.

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Yo, Brofessor. Hey, Brotein Shake.

When I was growing up, though, body building was well-established. Lou Ferrigno and Arnold Schwarzenegger were well known, along with whoever else there might have been.

Also, in the pages of the comic books I was reading, there would be some kind of advertisement for the skinny kid who got sand kicked in his face by the beach bully. One body-building program later, bully dispatched.

Fitness was a big deal during the 80s, so I'm sure that played into it, too. Sad thing, is I don't think I ever lifted weights or worked out until I was much older, let alone drank protein shakes or juiced. It was just one of those fascinations I had that I didn't have the wherewithal to accomplish, but it looked like an awesome thing to do.

Play In The NFL

I love football. My mother didn't let me play organized football, but some schoolmates would get together during recess to play, and I always seemed to do pretty good there. Until I got laid out by the older sibling of someone I played with who was actually on the football team and wanted to show me what it was like. It didn't help that I wasn't aware he was doing that, or I might have actually tried to defend myself.

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All the way to the Super Bowl, baby!

At any rate, of all my delusions of grandeur, I'm sure this was the biggest. I was short, and while I could out run most kids I played with, I did not have world class speed. Not even close. I just had decent timing, body control and awareness of where the football was. I guess I could have been a slot receiver, but what I probably could have been best at was runningback. I wasn't much for defense (although I did like to intercept the ball), and while I did play quarterback at times, my friend was actually better at that, so I would run the routes and catch the perfect spirals he would launch.

My mom's aversion to it sprung from the experiences the men in her lives had playing. My dad developed pretty bad arthritis in his knee from an injury he suffered, and my uncle broke his leg. That meant no organized football for me. Still not fair, but I got over it.

Ah, the glory days of recess football and over-the-top imaginations.

Evil Knievel

For those who don't know, Evil Knievel was a stunt performer who would jump his motorcycle over cars, buses, whatever, in the late 60s early 70s. He crashed a lot, too (maybe more than he made the jumps), but he would heal up and get back on the bike. For a 6-8 year old boy, it didn't get much manlier than that.

So, of course, I had to build a ramp to ride my bike over. But, of course, my Mom wouldn't let me do such a foolhardy and dangerous thing, so i had to improvise. The first attempt to launch myself was off an old chair with a long two-by-four propped on it. I had a new custom made bike that I thought was pretty fast, and since we had a fairly long gravel driveway, I figured I could get enough speed before I reached the two-by-four and catch some major air with some righteous hang time.

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This was me. In my mind.

I could visualize it. This was before visualizing was even a thing. However, what was in my head and what reality had in store might as well have been on opposite ends of the universe, because my stint as Evil Knievel began and ended the moment my front tire hit the board.

My perfect alignment of two-by-four was far from it. The chair wasn't anchored to anything, nor was the board, so instead of launching me to glory, it unceremoniously plunged me into the gravel as everything went sideways and I fell entangled in my bike. Fortunately, aside from some scrapes and bruises to my body and my pride, I survived the ill-advised stunt without major damage.

I did have another ramp incident a few years later. We'd moved by then, but I still had the custom made bike. Some kids had built a proper ramp and were jumping it out in the middle of the street in front of my house. I wanted to join them. My mom said no. In fact, she specifically said I could not jump the ramp with my bike.

Being Captain Literal back in those days, I said, "Okay, mom. I won't use my bike to jump the ramp." So, I promptly went outside and begged to borrow a friend's bike.

Well, needless to say, that didn't go well, either. My friend had a bike with a banana seat and the long rabbit-eared handle bars. I went over the ramp. I did not lift the front tire. I came down with two much weight on the front. The handlebars gave way and I hit the pavement face first. I don't know personally what happened after that, but my mother told me (she witnessed the entire thing from the kitchen window), that I skidded several feet across the asphalt to the opposite curb.

Apparently, I was conscience, but with a concussion. I could move on my own, but was really out of it. So, she put me in the car and went into the house to get her purse and keys. In the seconds that it took her to do that, I had left the car and was standing on the doorstep.

I don't remember any of that. My next recollection was sitting on a bench in the hall and nursing a throbbing headache while my mom consulted with the doctor in his office.

Sing In the Mormon Tabernacle Choir

I like to sing. I've been a part of different church choirs over the years and participated in school plays, including musicals.

In high school, one year I was the baritone in the barbershop quartet for The Music Man, and my senior year, I played Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof. At the time, I was skinny and couldn't really grow a beard. Now, I've got the belly, but still can't grow a beard. With that particular role, the band teacher was going to play Tevye because no one else could sing like him. Then, I came along and saved the day. Okay, I didn't save anything, but I had a fun time doing it and it was a great experience for me at that time in my life.

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The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra At Temple Square.

I love to listen to the Tabernacle Choir. I've had an opportunity to watch a practice and a few of their performances in person, and honestly, there's nothing like it. The combination of voices and the way the sound reverberates is truly inspiring and amazing.

Alas, to be a member, you not only need to have a good voice, but you need to b a fairly accomplished vocalist, and you have to read music. After all of these years, I still can't tell you whether I'm singing a B or an E note, and I rely heavily on hearing the music and the other voices around me. I have managed to grasp the concept of half notes, whole notes and quarter notes, and with years of singing the same songs, I do know some bass lines by heart.

Pilot

My dad loved to build model airplanes (the larger balsa wood and fiberglass kind), and so I grew up with a love of flying. We actually went up in a one engine plane a friend of my Dad owned. I don't remember much about that trip, except that it did nothing to curb my enthusiasm for flight.

As far as I know, he never took any lessons. Neither did I. I don't know why, other than the expense, and there were always other things to do. I guess that was just another one of those fantasy ideas that would be cool to do if everything ever perfectly aligned.

Draw Comic Books

Those of you following my serialization of a graphic novel I made 32 years ago will know I wasn't only into reading comic books, but trying to draw them. Let me emphasize that. I tried. While I did achieve some level of artistry (you can more or less tell what I was going for), I never did achieve a level of excellence or speed that would have been necessary to thrive in the business. Which is fine. I always liked creating my own characters more, and I feel I'm better at stringing words together than breathing characters to life with pen and ink.

That's Enough

There are probably more (they escape me now), but I'll stop here, and invite you to tell about the things you thought you'd like to do when you were younger. I'd like to know I'm not the only one with an overactive imagination and impossible dreams. :)