When I meet new people, or when anyone asks me what I do, I’d say that I’m a writer. Not professionally (anymore, because no one seems to want to pay me), but writing and producing content is essential to me now. But it wasn’t always. I once had a different path for my life in mind.

  This From Toddler To Teen is centered around a very mean elementary school counselor, some broken dreams and the reason I’m a writer.

I, like all sane toddlers and children, was obsessed with dinosaurs. I still am, but as a kid I was almost a tiny professional. I read any and all picture books, used up all my green crayons (all reptiles were green to me) and played for countless hours, cutting my palms on hard plastic stegosauruses.

But I wasn’t like those other snot nosed brats in the sand box. I, by the mature age of 8, had my entire professional career planned out. After seeing Sue the T. Rex at the Field Museum in Chicago, the tiny gears in my head started spinning.

I knew that Paleontology (the study of fossils) was a very specific and elite field to enter. But did that hinder me? No. Did I know what hinder meant? Still no. I decided that from that point on (3rd grade), I’d focus on becoming an archaeologist. It was more broad than paleontology but would open up the door to dope ass prehistoric discoveries. That is, until Marsha Edmonds single-handedly shattered my universe and slammed that door.

Ms. Edmonds was the counselor at New Haven Elementary school, I haven’t seen or heard of her for 15 years, but I think about her every single day. We had an event in the 4th grade where that c*#$ (she’s probably a great person, and I don’t really mean to insult her, but I do hate her) held a “career day” of sorts. If memory serves correctly (it probably doesn’t, and I might be making this story up) she showed us some video about the cool kinds of jobs that were emerging around the turn of the century. When it came time for me to tell my class my plans, I proudly explained my passion for Jurassic creatures and how I had already accounted for the archaeology option. With one passing motion, Edmonds dismissed my portfolio and said “That’s not realistic, how about photography?”

Typing this just now has made me livid. This monster ravaged me worse than any raptor ever could. How could you tell a child, with a well thought out response, no? But she was an adult, so I listened.

Whoa, is that a segway? I’ve never ridden one. Let’s hop on and see where it’s going!

The grade is the 8th. I have evolved into the loser pictured below. My life consisted solely of reading fantasy and playing video games (I haven’t changed a bit) when that dreaded question burrowed back into my life. 8th grade students had to choose their future career to be immortalized in the yearbook. At that point, I did not like to write. Even throughout high school, I never thought that I was creative or clever enough to write, so I never did.

But the only class I ever actually excelled at was English. I loved reading so much, the act of escaping into fantastic worlds and learning about characters like Aragorn or Aslan made me feel alive. I couldn’t (and still cannot) figure out how to make a career as a reader, so the only apparent option was to say that I would be an Author when I grew up.

I did fall in love with journalism as an adult and did gain a calling of sorts as a writer, that yearbook kind of decided my fate. It’s not like I was penning short stories and teachers were praising them. I wasn’t creating cute plays or poems in my free time. All I did was read a ton of nerdy books. Honestly, I’m jealous of the kids who were good at math and only had the option of being an accountant. And the ones who just love children and always wanted to be a teacher. I still don’t know how to become what I want to do when I grow up, and I’m a married man with a college degree.

Realistically, the only reason that I call myself a writer today is because I had to pick an answer to appease people who had no right to make children lock down their futures. I’m going to be a world-famous writer someday. My name is going to be attached to huge productions, and dammit Ms. Edmonds, I’m gonna dig up more about dinosaurs.