Dreams

I’ve been thinking a lot about all the things I’ve wanted to do with my life and wondering how I got to where I am now.

One of the earliest things I can remember wanting to be when I grew up was a dragon. I think the magical thing about being 3 or 4 is that you have no concept of what is or is not possible. How many little kids say things like, “When I grow up I’m going to be a butterfly!” and expect it to happen? A lot.

For a couple years my dreams took a slightly more realistic turn. When I was 5 I decided I was going to be a taxi driver so I could meet a bunch of people, and when I was 6 and we got our dog I decided I was going to be a dog trainer. I tried practicing on our dog, but it turns out that I’m total shit at getting dogs to behave. When I was 8 and we started writing long stories in school, I decided I wanted to be an author, and that I was going to make millions writing children’s fiction about hamsters.

Sadly, these are the dreams in my life that have been “practical.” Unfortunately, my dreams of what I’ll do with my life seem to keep getting more ridiculous as I grow up.

At age 10 we learned about the Civil War in school, and I decided that I was going to be a Civil War historian/re-enactor. Actually, I didn’t want to be either—the truth was that I wanted to LIVE during the Civil War, but I guess the microscopically small practical part of my personality realized that this would be as close as I could get. It wasn’t that I particularly wanted to have anything to do with the gory battles, but rather I had fallen in love with the Union uniforms and liked “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” (Actually, I still do.)

When I was 11 I started making movies with friends about fake/ridiculous news stories, and then I also decided that in order to be a good filmmaker (my new dream) I had to be French. Somehow, I was going to be the first Professional French Person. I taught myself extremely basic French and then would go to the park and talk to random kids in what little French I knew, pretending that I didn’t understand English. One girl my age became very upset and asked her mother to find out if I really was French. So the mother asked me in French, “How are you?” And I responded in grammatically perfect French, “Very well, thank you. And how are you this evening?” And I heard the mother say to her daughter, “Yes, she’s French.”

Maybe the proudest moment of my life.

At age 12 we started learning Latin in school, at which point I decided that I was going to be a Latin scholar at Oxford University for the rest of my life. My parents asked me why Oxford, why not Cambridge? And I would go on this whole tirade about how Oxford is superior, when in fact the reason I preferred Oxford to Cambridge was that Michael Palin is an alumnus of Oxford whereas John Cleese is an alumnus of Cambridge. At this point I knew only extremely basic Latin, only a few words and such, so I would strut around my room repeating a sentence in Latin I had memorized from the beginning of our book, the first sentence we read in Latin. I would walk around my room as if I had a very serious matter to discuss, as if I were a very important person in a toga arguing something before the Roman Senate, and I would repeat constantly in Latin, “We are telling the story of Quintus Horatius Flaccus. Reader, pay attention and enjoy the story.”

At age 13 I decided I was going to become a Crusader when I left school. I wanted to learn sword fighting, I wanted a huge shield with a cross, etc etc. I wanted to find the Holy Grail, and I decided I was Anglican. It honestly never occurred to me that I was Jewish. I mean, I knew I was Jewish, but it didn’t occur to me that this was a contradiction. I was too set on deciding how to bring about the new Round Table, and how to achieve purity of heart/soul/whatever and all that shit. Part of me actually really misses this period in my life, because at this age the answer to every moral question seemed perfectly obvious. I miss how dedicated I was during this time to being a good person, and how being good didn’t seem as difficult as it seems now.

At 14 I became a vegetarian (and would be for the next 4 ½ years), and I decided that I was going to dedicate my life to opening a vegan bowling alley in a town called Bangor in Wales. It was going to be awesome. All vegan food, pleather bowling shoes, and totally awesome TV screens at the end of each lane—which has nothing to do with being vegan, but is cool all the same.

At 15, or maybe 16, I decided that I was going to lead the Welsh people in a revolt against the English. We’d restore Wales as an independent kingdom and revive the Welsh language. At 17 I wrote my high school senior thesis on why Wales should be independent, and I pasted things like the words to the Welsh national anthem on my wall, next to a copy of a poster that called from the Welsh people not to fight in England’s army. I taught myself just enough Welsh to write the title of my thesis in Welsh, in the infinitely small chance that it would be selected for binding and the principal would have to read the title in front of the entire school assembly.

In college, while on the run from accidental membership in three different Christian groups, I decided that I was going to open up a nightclub that played only European dance music, and the lighting would be awesome, and there’d be TV’s and HOLY FUCK IT’D BE SO COOL. And to top it off, I was going to start a Swedish pop group, the next ABBA.

And this isn’t even everything. I’ve also wanted to be a World War I flying ace, an expert on Tudor England, a bass player, a speaker of all world languages, a spy, a soccer player, a lighting designer, a soccer commentator, an army psychiatrist, an all cheese restaurant owner, a chef, a politician, a teacher, a Disneyland costumed employee, a historic costume designer, a Mexican, and Robin Hood.

And, well, I still want to do ALL of these things with my life, as well as a million other dreams. Maybe I should be embarrassed by what a ridiculous person all this makes me…but I’m not. I still want to be a Latin scholar, but I also want to make movies about Latin classics. I want to train dogs in French, and take back the Holy Land from the infidels (of which I am one!), and then have a toast to my success in my European nightclub. After a toast in the nightclub, I want to drive people in my taxi to my vegan bowling alley.

And, fuck it, I still want to be a dragon.