You Will Grow Up To Be A Lion Tamer

You know that standardized test they give you in middle school that’s supposed to predict the job you’ll grow up to be best at? That test told me that I’d make a good lawyer. And I became a good lawyer.

But I was also a stressed-out, unhappy lawyer. I eventually left the practice of law to write. (Was “humorist” even on that test? I doubt it.)

Now that I’m no longer practicing law, I’ve got plenty of time to listen to NPR, which has made me aware of lots of other jobs that little test never contemplated. I’ve also become more suspicious about standardized tests. They make for a standardized world, and who wants that?

So when your kid brings home test results advising her to become a CPA, throw them in the trash and hand her this list of actual jobs I heard about during a year of listening to NPR:

Grow up to be a lion tamer — Photo: Muffet at flickr.com/photos/calliope

Dirigible historian
Professional arm wrestler
Lecturer in reggae studies
Tintinologist
Yacht insurance agent
Admiralty chart corrector
Space weather forecaster
Marine mammals stranding coordinator
Professor of Space medicine
User feedback expert
Editor of the High Times Encyclopedia of Recreational Drugs
Orbital debris scientist
Inactivity researcher
Cat photographer
Curator of ants at Harvard’s Department of Comparative Zoology

What if your kid doesn’t want to grow up to curate ants? That’s not the point.

We’re talking about our children’s futures! They should be awesome, not standardized. Fun! Amazing! Not ordinary and predictable. Middle school is when their imaginations should soar, not shut down. Why should your daughter aim for nursing school when she could aim for space medicine?

Let’s encourage our kids to think outside the box. Maybe your son will become a CPA anyway. But maybe he’ll end up with a job so cool that it makes listeners say “Wow” when they hear about it on NPR.

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Roz Warren

Roz Warren Roz is the author of Just Another Day At Your Local Public Library and Our Bodies, Our Shelves: A Collection Of Library Humor. She writes for The New York Times and The Funny Times. Her work also appears in Good Housekeeping, The Christian Science Monitor, The Philadelphia Inquirer and of course, the Humor Times. Connect with her on Facebook, follow her on Twitter or visit her website.