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Fragments From the Memory Log, Entry One

Back when I was no more than a mite of a person, still rather preformed in body and mind, way back when a computer had to take up an entire room and Muskrat Love was only a form of deviant sexual behavior, I caught myself wondering what I was destined to become when I finally joined the ranks of the grownups — in other words, what kind of job I’d get when I entered the legal workforce.

The question didn’t form on its own. It was planted. By an adult. Damn them!

As I said I was young, too young perhaps to be considering what aim my professional life should take. The expected ones of policeman and fireman flipped up (police officer and firefighter; children were not yet taught the benefit of politically-correct thought). I had a knack at drawing, so perhaps I was destined for a life in art. There was an inclination to toy with mechanical stuff, as I had by then pulled apart and reassembled a couple radios, the gearshift to a bicycle, and our home telephone to figure out how they worked. Did the engineering world beckon? And I read everything, every book within range of my lowly, youthful reach. Sadly I was unaware of a job that paid you to read (I guess editor never bubbled up).

So there I was, a branch of a boy wracking my brain, trying to think of all possible kinds of employment available to me and testing as I leafed through them. I liked food (but don’t we all): a chef? My father was in the Air Force, but that was more a deterrent than a lure to thoughts of a military career. A truck driver? A scientist? A teacher? A travel agent? There were so many choices, too many vocations I could take up. Never mind that there were few I’d want. So I gave up. It wasn’t worth the confusion and the real sense that I’d failed at something, somehow, somewhere. I assumed it was better to be without a choice than to choose wrongly. From then on when asked about my long-term future career plans, I’d answer noncommittally and let the querier suggest options, each tending to lack a palpable taste. Thankfully, eventually, they stop asking you that question.

Often it’s told in my family’s lore how my older brother, back when he was no more than a barely shaped lad (and I a speckle in the womb), was asked the same question (Damn those adults to Hell!). Without pause and from an obvious conviction of belief, he said “I’m gonna be a journalist.” Not a writer. Not a newspaperman. A journalist. How cute those precocious ones can be!

Sometimes we just know what we want, or get lucky and figure it out. Too bad I’ve never believed in luck…

And they whirled and they twirled and they tangoed
Singin’ and jingin’ the jango
Floatin’ like the heavens above
It looks like muskrat love