What I could have been

if only, sometimes, in my mind. I have always been sort of imaginative.  I spent a large portion of my early childhood imagining/creating something or another. 

From the time that I was in 2nd grade until I was in 6th grade, I came home for lunch from school on most days, and so I'd run the whole 4 blocks from school to home.  (In retrospect, I don't know that I'd let my child leave school and be unattended for even 4 blocks, but it was the 70s.) Anyway, most of the time, I'd imagine that I was an Olympic track star running a race, and I'd always come in first.  (I did run track in high school, and long distances when I was in my early 20s, but I never approached Olympic levels.)

My other favorite thing was to pretend that I was actually a witch.  You have to remember that I was a child of 70s, and so Bewitched (and I Dream of Jeannie) were in reruns after school, so when I imagined being a witch, I imagined being a kid version of Samantha.  I'd look at a leaf and whisper for it to move, and most of the time, just like magic, the wind would carry the leaf off somewhere.  I could make birds fly from trees too pretty often.  :)

I was also very into creating musical numbers.  I was forever putting my parents LPs on the stereo and making up my own choreography.  I was brilliant, I tell you.  :) I was even able to come up with an amazing routine for the Disney Winnie The Pooh record we had.  I was also in tap and ballet at the time, and would sometimes make up MUCH more interesting choreography (in my head) than my dance teacher made for our routines.  My teacher didn't quite appreciate it when I wasn't paying attention because I was too busy thinking of my own routines.  Or worse, when I would start dancing my routines instead.

And then, of course, there was my writing.  I spent HOURS and HOURS of my child writing.  I'd write poems and stories mostly.  Sometimes I'd write lyrics for a song and since I was in piano, well, OF COURSE, I wrote the music too.  My writing did get noticed by the adults in my world.  I am sure it was just simple, sweet kid stuff, but some teachers did think that I was pretty talented way back then.  I won several awards in school for my writing when I was a child.  My parents told their friends about what a good writer I was, and so now, I still get them asking "Are you still writing? You were so good (when you were 6!)" Of course, none of these same adults, and slightly less so with my parents, really considered my technical writing actually "writing."  They just thought that I was a computer expert (which I wasn't.  Well, maybe a just little bit more than the average person, but that was because I started doing computer documentation back in the early 90s.)

And then there was science.  I loved to write and I loved to read, but what really got me going was SCIENCE.  I loved everything about it.  I loved learning about it.  I loved talking about it.  I loved doing it.  And then when I went to junior high and high school, I took every course that I could that related to science.  As soon as I knew what a microbiologist was, I decided that that is what I wanted to do when I grew up.  (I did, actually, start college with my degree as microbiology. But Organic Chemistry 2 did me in.  I just couldn't seem to quite understand it and since I'd rather change my major than fail, switch I did.  Of course, not to English right off.  That would have been too easy. :) )

But teaching? Being a Mom? Training? Creating a business? Yea, I don't remember EVER imagining those things.  Not even the mom thing.  I was not exactly a girly-girl.  My older brother was 18 months older than me, and my younger sister didn't come along for 4 years after I was born, so my and my brother hung out all the time when we were kids.  I was way more into STP cars than I was into dolls.  And by the time I was in my early 20s, I figured that I was going to just have a career; not get married, and not have kids.  I did briefly entertain becoming a high school English teacher when I was in college, and I went to my student teaching orientation meeting, where we sat in on an English class, and that was enough for me to decide that I didn't want to teach.  And my dad was the one who created a business.  That wouldn't be what I would do.

I am glad (and it is probably for the best too!) that I didn't end up any of the things that I imagined as a child.  What I have been in the past 20 years really feels what is RIGHT for me.  It feels like it fits.  Teaching, training, technical writing, being a mom.  All those things make me smile.  Well, most of the time.  Although, it is too bad that you couldn't have seen my moves back in the day. Or not.  :)

I always thought that I would have made a good hippie

Here I am in probably 1976 with my friend Kelli K.  I loved that wallpaper.  Please note the plaid PANTS. 

Well, I was born in the 60s and all, 1966 to be precise, but I was a little young to be hitting Haight- Ashbury during the Summer of Love. 

I did have parents who LOVED folk music though and I remember many, many nights as a young child as we listened to Peter, Paul and Mary, Woody Guthrie, The Kingston Trio, The Limelighters, Simon & Garfunkel, and The Mamas & The Papas on my parents LPs on the big console stereo.  My older brother is only 18 months older than me, and my younger sister didn't come along until 1970 (and my younger brother didn't arrive until 1977.) So for those first few years (my parents married in 1964), it was just the 4 of us.

No, by being a young child of the 60s, I would not be able to be at protests or travel around in a VW bug.  My first memory (at almost 3) is my mom picking me up and putting me in front of our big TV and saying "This Is Important." It was July 20th, 1969.  (Do you know what was so important?) So I was alive for some of the big events of the 1960s, including the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.  And I was alive when Richard Nixon was elected. (And when he resigned.)  But I didn't really know anything about it until I was in junior high and high school, many years later.  And although I was alive during much of Vietnam War, I didn't really realize it.  In fact, by the time I really "knew" about the Vietnam War, everyone acted like it had been so long ago. But I didn't get to wear those cool dresses that the women wore in 1960s or the gloves or the hats.  I didn't get to  wear flowers in my hair.

No, I was a child of the 70s really.  And still too young to do things to "change the world." As a kid, we did talk about not littering. A lot as I recall. (Anybody else remember "Give a hoot, don't pollute!") But there was little else that I remember about any other social and culural issues of the 1970s.

The kids weren't listening to folk music then.  They listened to stuff like Bread. (Not my parents, of course, we were still listening to folk music at home.  Although my parents had added the folk country singer - John Denver - to their collection.) We sang "Time In A Bottle" at one of my chorus concerts.  And then at the end of the decade, kids were listening to stuff like - disco.  Thankfully, for a very short time, and thankfully, before I really became a teenager.

The only 70s fashion that I wore was LOTS of plaid. (At least I wasn't the only kid. When you look at my school pictures from elementary school, it is a big sea of blue/orange/purple/green/red/pink plaid.) At my elementary school anyway, we weren't wearing bell bottoms or halter tops. More like Toughskins jeans and polyester plaid shirts.

And so by the time I was a teenager and a young adult, it was the 1980s.  The 80s were NOT a decade like the 1960s.  Or even the 1970s.  It was all about technology. And money. And NOT doing things the "old fashioned way." It was about being better than the next person - in one way or another.  It was about excess and greed. 

But even though I had my collar up and had a boombox, the 80s didn't fit me.  I was, even back then, into wanting to fight for what I believed, but I seemed to be the only one who didn't agree with the "older" generation.  I still wanted to be like the Lorax and but my friends just laughed at me.  I fit more in the naturalness of the 1960s and the back to basics of the 1970s, but I couldn't find hardly anyone who was like me. 

And so, eventually, I mostly gave up.  I did, however, very quietly, very personally, protest against the things that didn't fit me in the 1980s.  And the 1990s.  And I read.

And things gradually changed. Oh, not back to the 1960s or the 1970s. And I don't think that is bad either.  I, and my family, still have plenty of technology in our lives, mostly for the good.  And my daughters sometimes wear skinny jeans (I, thankfully for the general public in my city, do NOT. LOL) But I see that spark in people coming back where they are willing to fight for what fits THEM- and I mean all kinds of people from all ends of the political spectrum.  I see people who care about the land again and their food and where things come from.  I see people who want to have less.  I see people who want to know how to make things and not just always buy things.  I see people who do things because they are passionate about it and not because it will make them the most money.  And I see people trying to do more to HELP each other and not just look out for themselves.

And I'm trying to teach my children the good from this time.  I want them to realize they can have a voice.  They can question the status quo.  I want them to be able to look at all the options that they have in these times.  I want to show my children that even during times of economic struggle, there is much good. I want to show my children that I am willing to do what I am passionate about and that they can too. I want to show my children that there are things that we have now that can make their lives easier and bring us closer.  I want to teach my children to fight for what would do the most good for the world,  and not necessarily because it is part of one side's agenda or the other.

And I make them listen to a little "Puff The Magic Dragon" now and again too. :)