When I was little I wanted to be an Architect. Let me rephrase that, when I was little, my Dad wanted me to be an Architect. I wanted to be a bunch of things; a veterinarian, an inventor, Punky Brewster…even then I was indecisive. One thing I did know was that I liked to draw. According to my mother, I started drawing as soon as I was able to hold a pencil. My idea of a good time was, leave me alone, please, I need full concentration while drawing giant people loitering nearby tiny, trippy-looking castles that they are far too large to fit into.
I don’t have kids so I haven’t read any “How to Raise Your Children without Ruining Their Lives” books or anything like that, so I’m not sure when the proper time is to throw out blind encouragement and start bringing in actual doses of reality to start paving the way towards their future as successful adults. However, something tells me it’s a little bit later than age ten.
Being that I liked to draw and did it often, my Dad must have decided it was time to start laying the bricks for a nice path towards a future career. Turns out the path wasn’t headed toward famous artist. An Architect would be much less of a gamble, and I immediately knew that’s what he wanted me to be once he started randomly peppering the term into the conversation.
One time I decided to take the bait. I thought, Okay, I don’t know anything about anything, I’m ten. If this drawing thing is gonna pay off, might as well take some elderly advice and practice doing this “Architect” thing he keeps talking about. I then started drawing blueprints for my two story mansion.
You might be saying, “Two stories? That’s it?” If so, you should give me a break as I was only ten and to a ten year old, owning an entire two stories to yourself is like owning a mansion.
Anyway, I started mapping out my blueprints. I had two large sheets of paper, one for each story, that I would then overlap when explaining the levels to my investors. I was pretty proud of what I’d come up with; my mansion had a huge master bedroom, jacuzzi tub, landscaping. It was the shit. Well, it was until I showed it to my step mom.
I laid out the blueprints and told her I’d designed them for the home that I would build once I was an Architect. She then looked them over and proceeded to crush my [dad's] dreams. It was too long ago to be able to quote her verbatim, but it went something like this “Jessie, your layout is all wrong, the bathroom and kitchen downstairs should be laid out below the bathrooms upstairs so that the plumbing flows properly. This is all scattered, it could never actually work like this.” Smash.
Needless to say, I never drew any more blueprints after that. That’s not to say that a little constructive criticism is wrong, but sometimes it might be better to let people figure things out on their own. Maybe if my first attempt wouldn’t have been torn to shreds, my career path might have went in a totally different direction. Ah well, I never really wanted to be an Architect anyway; Sorry, Dad.
