What do you want to be when you grow up?

When I was growing up I thought I’d like to be a physiotherapist, more specifically Liverpool Football Club’s physiotherapist as a lack of any sporting talent whatsoever meant I was never going to make it in the sports star stakes, so I figured I’d have to find alternative ways to get involved.

I dabbled with the idea of becoming a sports journalist too, and as a teen went along to review a St Patrick’s Athletic and Finn Harps game and interviewed Pat’s manager, Brian Kerr, afterwards to put my skills to the test. All my no-interest-in-sports-whatsoever mates agreed it was the best sports article they’d ever read. That it was also likely the only sports article they’d ever read is of absolutely no relevance at all.

Teaching, nursing, a boss, singing sensation, chief accordion player at Croke Park, all popped on to my “shure maybe I’ll give that a go” list and it came to pass that I changed my mind several times over. If truth be told, I’m still not 100 per cent sure what I want to do when I grow up. Currently, I have my eyes set on being in charge of whatever government department ultimately is responsible for getting rid of the nonsense that is homework for primary school children, but unfortunately at the moment it seems it’s just left to individual schools to make a call. There’s a lot of kids counting on me – I know because their mammies email me to tell me. I sense their frustrated sobs – and the kids hate it too.

But I digress, I’m good at that. “A great woman for the tangents,” my friend once said. A handy skill for a newspaper columnist – if only my career guidance counsellor had noticed.

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We’ve been talking about options and dreams and futures here a lot recently as the teens have had to make some decisions around their subject choices. It’s hard when you’re a first year to tie in the choices you make then with the college course options you might consider at the other end of your secondary schooling. It’s also hard when you’re a mother who could help her children with particular subjects, should they run into difficulty at any stage throughout their schooling, but said children opt to choose different subjects purely so their mother can’t interfere in the way she might like.

This may or may not have happened once or thrice.

Ah sure it’s all fun and games until they go on their Leaving Cert holiday to Magaluf and reprioritise their CAO list

A mother asked me recently if one of my children had given any thought to what he might like to do in the future. Had the child in question been my fifth-year student, I might perhaps have anticipated the ask, but because it was directed towards one of my, at that very moment in time, light saber fighting Jedis, it caught me a little off guard.

“Yesterday he wondered why I couldn’t just have called him Spiderman and be done with it when he was born, and a fortnight ago he was planning to be a pig farmer. I tend not to put too much weight on what he’s thinking regarding career choice,” I replied, thinking she was joking. When it became apparent she wasn’t and had given lots of thought to her, granted a couple of years older than my child, son’s career path, I joked again. “Ah sure it’s all fun and games until they go on their Leaving Cert holiday to Magaluf and reprioritise their CAO list,” I laughed.

My view, of course is clouded by my own ever changing list of what I wanted to be when I grew up. It’s also clouded by wanting to live up to what my parents wanted me to be, perhaps a little more than being true to my own dreams. And it’s definitely clouded by having a child who did a complete U-turn on what she planned to do when choosing her Leaving Cert subjects versus what she ultimately opted to do in college.

Still, it’s hard not to imagine what they might do in the future and like all parents I have my own ideas on what might suit their different interests and very different personalities best.

It turns out Spiderman has been giving it some thought too, and he may have relegated pig farming to hobby status. But he knows he’ll need a job to fund it.

“I’m going to do the same job as you Mum,” he announced one recent evening, much to my surprise and partly to my delight.

“Wow, really?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “I saw you on the telly eating cake the other day and I’ve decided I’m going to be a food taster too.”

Seems he’s good at tangents also.