Childhood Dreams and the Golden Age of Your Life

January 7th, 2009

They say that the golden years are your last ones in life, the gold age of comic books was the 1940s, and while there was a similar boom in pulp sf, that the golden age of science fiction is when you were twelve.

You’ve probably already seen this, or heard of it, but for those who haven’t, here is “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch, terminally ill professor (now deceased) and virtual reality pioneer, about achieving your childhood dreams:

If you haven’t watched it before, it really is worth an hour of your life.

It’s a terrific message to his kids and to all of us.   I think our childhood dreams really do define who we are at our core and to what extent we find happiness later in life.   Sure, people do change and people do lose interest in some topics and achieve others.   I find myself looking back to my lifelong desires as a guide to what I should do with my life and to keep me on track.   For instance, money was never that important to me, but enjoying things that were cool always was.   I suspect I now suffer in some ways because I had too many interests growing up, and it’s been a matter of paring back rather than pursuing all with equal vigor.

Here are the things I really wanted to do growing up, say into my high school years at least, with some outcomes or explanations.   I’ll start with the home runs and work toward the strike outs.

Become a science fiction writer.   I first started writing a novel at 11.   It sucked and I never finished it, but the dream was there and I followed through.

Become an astronomer.   This was something I came up with at age 6 based on a fascination with space and the things in it.   Astronauts only went to the moon or orbit, and all the really cool stuff was farther away.   It behooves us to look around the whole universe and see what it is like.

Run a martathon.   My dad was a marathon runner and broke three hours when he was in his mid 30s.   He ran the Boston marathon, too, if that means anything to you.   I was 9 or 10 when I started training for my first marathon, which didn’t happen until I was 39.   The idea was always back there that it was something I wanted to do, an ultimate physical test that could be past with enough effort.

Become a chess master.   Not quite.   My USCF rating hit its peak (about 1950) in my first or second year of college, some 5-6 years after starting competitive chess.   I drew the first six masters I ever played, one of whom was a senior master with a rating over 2400, who took the draw I offered because he was totally busted.   I lacked the killer instinct in those days, and it was more important for me not to lose than to actually win.   You do better in chess winning.   I also felt bad beating my friends, which I did in the final round of 1986 to win the Missouri amateur championship, and bad too when they beat me.   I let this go in college when I realized I would likely never get anywhere close to grandmaster strength, and that while I might be able to make master (rating of 2200), that would be it after years more of draining effort.   I was double majoring in electrical engineering and space physics at a top university (Rice) and something had to give.   Drawing Boris Spassky in a simultaneous exhibition my sophomore year (and being featured in a newspaper article about the event) was a nice cap for me for the chess career.

Become a comic book artist.   Nope, didn’t happen, but it could have.   I was good at drawing and painting and loved it growing up.   I won awards at some science fiction art shows at 14 (junior category), and could have gone to college as an art major based on my high school portfolio.   In college, doing the science and engineering double, I lacked the time.   I was also playing chess, and writing science fiction short stories, in my spare time (what a geek I was!).   The idea of a career as a comic artist, even with the virtual rock stardom of Todd McFarlane (and a few others who need not be mentioned), seems not very appealing today.   I would still love to finagle a comic book writing gig someday, or write a superhero novel (with realistic science, I know, unpossible!).   I still have a comics collection of 3000+ books, and confess that John Byrne was my idol in those days.

Write computer games.   I wrote several, and big pieces of several more, on my Apple II+ back in Junior High and High School.   The first, somehow named Zarzon II, was the “ultimate game.”   I liked how in those days it was possible to be the storyteller, the artist, the game tester, and the programmer.   I loved playing video games then, and still enjoy some now.   I have some friends who are in the industry and have worked on some famous stuff.   Now that games are big team projects, I find the appeal somewhat less, and like science fiction, I do think the golden age of video games is when you’re 12.   Hard to totally recapture the magic for me — the technology has changed and the experience is qualitatively different.   Favorite arcade games included Donkey Kong, Rygar, Dragon Spirit, Phoenix, Battlezone, and more…played the hell out of that Atari 2600, too.   These days it’s more strategy games and recent favorites are the Heroes of Might and Magic games, Diablo II.   Trying to quit as their addictive nature and false sense of accomplishment replaces real accomplishmets I’d like to achieve.

Become a paleontologist.   Not very compatible with other full-time science careers.   But I live in Wyoming and there are summer events where people can participate in digs.   I think I’d be satisfied with learning how to find dinosaur bones of almost any type, and finding some.   Doable in the future.

Find bigfoot.   Well, this sure hasn’t happened.   I have done a lot of camping in areas of bigfoot sightings and have visited the location of the Patterson-Gimlin film, which was a fun fulfillment of a childhood dream.   I was a member of the International Society for Cryptozoology, founded by my late friend Richard Greenwell.   Richard was an awesome energy, and even went to the Congo once on an expedition looking for, Mokele Mbembe, a modern day dinosaur.   You may have seen him in some documentaries over the years.   As a member of the Explorer’s Club, Richard lived his childhood dreams his entire life with a great and infectious enthusiasm.   Man, I am such a geek that I love this stuff.   I do though.   The odds are really long that any of this is real, but the mystery has an allure for me and makes me want to explore the world.

Become a movie director.   My family had a Super 8 camera, and back in the late 1970s I made several movies.   There was a poor stop-action movie featuring Micronaut toys (which I loved, and sold to some other child at heart over Ebay in the 1990s), a movie about drug addiction for a school project, a Mr. Bill movie, and a Star Trek movie I never finished.   I was in grad school at Texas the same time that Robert Rodriguez was a student there, and I wish I would have met him.   I read and admired his comic strips in the Daily Texan (I actually did some comic strips in those days, notably one I turned in with a 63-page takehome midterm for my stellar structure class, which had made me loopy, and considered trying to break in at the Texan, which also featured Too-Much-Coffee-Man).   He sold his body to science at the local Pharmaco I drove past every day to finance his first movie, El Mariaci, and the rest is histoy (check out his book Rebel Without a Crew for a fascinating read).   I think I might have to settle for making a book trailer at some point, or hope for an option on one of my novels.

Being Charlie of Charlie’s Angels.   Oh yeah, I was girl crazy, too.   That dream was on the damp side in those days, but it’s all good now.   I’m not quite as interested in dating Farah Fawcett today however.   I don’t know if the 20-somethings today really know what she was, and how big Charlie’s Angels was.   The recent movies were much better than the original TV show, but still really dumb.   I never played Doctor growing up, but there was a group of girls in 6th grade that were Mike’s Angels.   Seriously.   I always was a bit precocious.   Unfortunately we actually played at private detective.   Well, I have a clue about women today at least and have done more that most men I imagine.   I’ll call it a dream fulfilled there and let myself finish on a high (low?) note…

Whenever I get in the mid-life crisis mindset, which happens to professors post-tenure (which is where I am now), I look back to what really made me happy then as a guide to what makes me happy now.   It was fun then and it still is to me.   I’m currently on sabbatical, which is a good time to do this sort of thing.   I’m living in Brazil right now, which was never a childhood dream, although visting the alien worlds of science fiction surely was.   Learning Portuguese will fulfull a more adult dream of learning a foreign language.   I believe in finding new dreams, too.   I didn’t know everything when I was 12, although I’m sure I thought I did.

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