Growing Up/Growing Old

You are at a cocktail party, meeting new people; likely friends of friends, etc. that you have never met or heard tell of before, and what does the conversation eventually come to? After exchanging pleasantries, someone (generally the cocky competitive type) will ask 'What do you DO'? Everyone knows what this question really means. The probe is not into your Sunday afternoon hobbies, nor is it about a particular sporting activity that you may have always excelled at and really enjoy participating in. Nope, they want to know about your money making, 40 hour per week, annoying commute parenthesized career. And you best parley your boring job into a best damned explanation of a career if you hate it or else the shame may be too much to handle. Sometimes it's difficult to grasp for many that a day job does not define a person. Little children, from perhaps as early as 5 or 6 years old start being tormented with the annoying question from their elders 'What do you want to be when you grow up'? Is this the prologue to the question to come 2 or 3 decades later at the aforementioned cocktail party? Oh the pressure on the wee bambino. In grade 7 I had this idea that a profession I might be interested in pursuing was to be a casting director - finding talent to fill roles for movie and television characters. It was soon forgotten, never followed and while may have not been the most practical, 15+ years later I now wonder if I were to reconsider, possibly envision actually following through with that foresight, would what I be 'DOING' as a 'GROWN UP' make me more fulfilled? Happier? Rich? Hell, I'd be warm living in California - that's for darn sure. No regrets; the exclamation point proclaimed by all who don't want to admit they may have made a mistake. We have a family friend who followed a teaching opportunity at an upstate New York University because of his advanced prowess in the field of mathematics. Yesterday was 03/03/09. According to what I heard on the radio, it was 'square-root day'. Only happens 8 or 9 times in a century; next one will come on 04/04/16 and is considered a 'holiday' of sorts for mathematicians. Now for these people who discover they are super duper arithmetic genius', at what point do they decide they are going to make their 'DOING' math and equations, etc.? Do they pursue a career path that takes the best of their cranial ability; is this an easy way out, a version of 'settling' because they happen to be good at it? Whatever our decisions, or yellow brick roads set out before us, I can tell you I can't remember when I ever wanted to grow up, or grow old. Can someone get me Peter Pan's number?

Toodles