grown-ups: work

When I was a child, i was told I could be anything I wanted to be when i grew up. So naturally, i wanted to be the guy who got to ride on the back of a garbage truck. They had all the fun.

When I was about 5, I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I replied with "Police dog", genuinely believing that it was possible. I'm amazed my parents didn't just put me in a box labelled "unwanted" and leave me out in the street.

i used to believe for a long time that engineers are those people who drive railway trains(i.e the engine)

I must have been about seven or eight, and my little brother maybe four, when Uncle Ken came to stay with us for a couple of weeks, all the way from Australia. He wasn't a real uncle, just a friend of my dad's, but we'd never met anyone from Australia before. Naturally we wanted to know what his life was like.

He told us in all seriousness that he was an alternative kangaroo tamer. He would calm the spirits of rowdy kangaroos by playing them Rolf Harris records to hypnotise them. The kangaroos would bounce up and down in time to the beat until they fell into a sleepy trance.

I must have been twelve when it clicked that bouncing up and down did not lead to a hypnotic trance. Naturally it took another couple of years for me to be sure he'd been having us on.

I believed that, while my father went to work, he didn't actually have a job. That was because there were only three things you could do that were considered jobs: you could be a fireman, a policeman or a chef. I think I considered it important to have a special hat.

When I told my kindergarten teacher that my dad had no job, she became concerned.

When I was around four, I used to think that my doctor lived at the doctor's office. Then one day she mentioned something about going home, and I said, "But don't you live here?" She and my mother got a laugh out of it..

i used to believe my dad was the greatest while he worked in a pizza chain store. the pizza logo on the top of his car made me proud. i wasn't that impressed when he owned his own construction business or took me on cruises.

In my parents' wedding album, they have a picture of them edited so it looks like they're in a wine glass. When I was four, my dad convinced me that they shrunk small enough to fit in the glass! From this, I determined that wedding photographers had special powers.

i used to think that customers were people who work behind counters until i learnt what they really were at drama club

One summer I realized all kids got a break from school in the summer. So I asked Mom, "Does Dad go on summer vacation from work, too?" I guess I thought Dad was going to some kind of grown up school.

My mom is a doctor, and I remember that one day (I was about 6) she was talking about the fact that she had to perform a prostate exam. I had heard of a job called "prostitution" so I figuered that a prostitute was just someone who did prostate exams, (so basically, it was a fancy word for a doctor.) So, on parents day, (our parents came in and talked about what they did for a living) I wanted to impress my teacher by using big words... You can see where this is going. When it was my turn, I grabbed my mothers hand, marched up in front of the class, and loudly proclaimed "This is my mother, and she is a prostitute!"

One day my dad came home from work and we were all sitting round the table eating dinner. Dad wasn't happy and mum ask if everything was ok at work. Dad said that he had given Donna his reciptionist, the sack. I sat there thinking why has he given her a heshan sack, what can she do with that? For years i thought that getting the sack meant that you were given a heshan sack until one day i just learnt that it meant you've lost your job.

i wanted to work in the mcdonalds drive through and was certain i would live in a mansion. then reality came crashing down on me...

When I was in the second grade, the kid who sat behind me would always do really gross things. One day I looked back and caught him trying to put the pointy end of a pencil in between his eyelid and push back (like, into the back of his eye... gross), and so I asked him what he was doing. He told me "Don't try this, I'm a professional." So, for the longest time, I thought that anyone distinguished as a "professional" poked lead pencils into the back of their eyes. I guess that's why I thought my dad's boss was crazy.

I remember the first time I learned there was a place in hospital called 'casualty', I assumed it must be the 'casual' area - where all the doctors wear jeans + t-shirts + just lay around doing nothing all day.

When I was a little girl in Kindergarten the teacher asked everyone, "what they wanted to be when they grew up"? I answered, a monkey! Because monkey's don't work and they just hang around all day and have fun at the zoo and at the circus.