At a recent dinner with other women my age, we hit on a hilarious topic: our childhood aspirations. Two women said they wanted to be high school majorettes. One said she took “marching lessons” so she’d be ready when it came time to prance onto the football field, but they didn’t go well.
The other majorette wannabee bragged that she was a fabulous baton twirler, in fact the best in her small high school. However, she also played the alto clarinet—the only one in her school band. Its director explained they needed her more on the clarinet than with her baton. So, she “took one for the team,” or the band in this case, and gave up her twirler aspirations.
A third woman, who became the Treasurer of a commercial concrete company, had ballerina dreams, but she, too, didn’t make the cut. She laughingly confessed, “I never got to the tutu stage.” Judging from the size of that lady’s diamonds, I’m thinking she made the right choice.
I, on the other hand, wanted to be a cheerleader. Never mind that I could barely do a summersault, had never done the splits and cartwheel attempts made me dizzy. No surprise that I was passed over for the Sixth Grade cheerleader squad. The judge cited my slowness getting up from a squat. Since I can’t do that AT ALL these days, slowness doesn’t seem so bad, but others did it faster and still can.
I know only two people who actually fulfilled their childhood dreams. One is my dear sister-in-law who saw a ballerina perform on her elementary school stage and found her dream, although there wasn't any money for ballet in those days. In her sixties, she finally took ballet lessons, only going on point after a full year of training. She danced in various performances of the Nutcracker and in Cinderella, even dancing during chemotherapy. A San Diego paper carried a piece about her, titled “Dancing Through Cancer.” The picture shows her 70+-year-old self, all cured and lovely gorgeous in that pretty tutu.
I am the second dreamer. After giving up on cheerleading, I wanted a writing career, and in Sixth Grade, wrote a theme about it. I even interviewed the only published author in our small town. Approaching retirement, I got great advice from a friend: “Don’t decide what you want to do in retirement. Decide who you want to BE.” Now it was time to call myself a writer and prove it.
Thanks to the kind encouragement of a previous newspaper editor and a current magazine’s editor, I accomplished my goal. Sometimes Old School dreams DO come true, even if it takes 60 years!
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