When I grow Up

When you were a kid and you dreamed about what you wanted to be when you grew up, what was it you saw.  Was it a fireman, a doctor, a lawyer, an actor, or an astronaut? Did you want o be a pilot, or did you play with tonka trucks and dream of one day operating a real one?

I dreamed a lot of things.  I wanted for a very long time to be a doctor.  As a teen ager I volunteered at the local hospital as a Candy Striper and I always wanted the assignments in the patient wards.  I didn't care for the reception area where I directed visitors to the patients rooms. I didn't care for the gift shop.  I loved the food cart which allowed me stop in to each patients room and offer them a beverage.  I also loved being on ward duties where I was allowed to read to the patients, take them for walks up and down the hallways, run lab work errands and just observe.  I put in more than 3,000 hours of volunteer service, had numerous pins and awards for my dedication and then one day, I walked away.

I was on 3rd ward duty which was where most of the geriatric patients were found.  These were wonderful, sweet, but sometimes contakerous elderly people who were very ill and many would never go home again.  Some had regular visitors, some had none, but I loved to take time for each one.  On a Thursday evening in the summer of my 14th birthday, I was working 3rd ward.  If you read my blog, you know already that I am claustrophobic and don't love elevators.  Well that shift one of the nurses gave me a few containers of urine to take downstairs to the lab for tests.  I was required to use the freight elevator as to not expose the general public to the lab samples so I pushed the call button and when the elevator came I boarded.  Just as the doors were closing an orderly stopped them with his clipboard and when the doors opened he boarded with a guerney.  On the guerney was a patient, who had died.  I didn't know which of my ward had passed, but I knew I would discover it when I returned and ran my rounds. Suddenly the elevator came to jolting halt and made a very loud thud and then went silent, No motor sounds, no movement jsut silence.  Silence and me with a guerney, two cups of urine, a dead body and orderly who might as well have been dead he had so little movement, no sound, and no emotion.  At 14, claustrophobic and experiencing my first dead body, I had no idea what to expect or how to handle what happened next.  No one had told me that bodies made sounds and movement after death , so naturally when the body made a sound as though breathing and suddenly twitched resulting in the sheet falling away from the arm,  I freaked.  Yes, I freaked, I cried and panicked and hyperventilated and though we were stopped for only a few moments I was certain ot was hours, and the story in years to come would say so.

As soon as the doors opened I forgot the urine in my hands, made my way directly to the director of volunteers office, left the urine on her desk along with  my name badge and a note that simply said, "I can't do this" and walked away. The end of a dream, the end of my medical career.

In the years to come my dreams came and went ,all for various reasons. A teacher (not enough patience), a lawyer (school was too expensive), an actress, an author, a veterinarian (couldn't stand to watch the animals die, plus the whole medical thing),

Here I am 31 years since that day in the elevator, and though this isn't where I dreamed I'd be, I'm happy.  I am an executive assistant and proud of it. I work for only the highest executives, CEO, COO, CFO, Presidents, Owners, Executive Directors and Directors, and I am at the top of my field.  I'm good at what I do and I like it.  I know at age 4, 8, or 14 I didn't say to myself, "I think I want to grow up and be an executive assistant", but no matter, its where I landed nearly 30 years ago and I have spent years of my life and supported many executives as I honed my skills and fine tuned my knowledge. 

The point here is that none of us knows when we are young exactly where and what we will be. Dreams change, directions change, but in the end, if we are true to ourselves we end up in a good place and we are happy. Do what your good at, and don;t let anyone make you second guess or think less of yourself because of what you do.