what do you want to be when you grow up?

A few years ago, as I went to pick my daughter up from her pre-school, I noticed on the front of her classroom door the teacher had hung the children’s answers to the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” One child wanted to be a fireman, another a ball player. Another wanted to be a teacher.

My daughter wanted to be a unicorn.

I didn’t know what to make of this. No one else had said anything fantastical, the implications of which made me nervous. I spoke about it with my wife who reassured me by saying simply, “wouldn’t you want to be a unicorn?”

My daughter is incredibly social. She loves to perform and is the consummate hostess at gatherings. She is exhaustingly active. She has an impossible memory (which she must get from my wife). But more than anything, I believe, she has limitless imagination and creativity. She constantly wants to hear stories and more often enjoys making up some of her own along with writing and singing any number of original songs on the fly. It is this uncensored vision that I admire most about her and wish to foster.

Recently, we asked her again, what she wanted to be when she grew up. This time she said a veterinarian. I do fear sometimes that imagination and creativity diminish greatly as we get older. I had worried it was starting to happen with her, not 2 years after she was initially asked what she wanted to be when she grew up but now with a more conventional response.

Fortunately her answer came with this clarification: She wanted to be a veterinarian, so she could take care of all her unicorn friends.