Renaissance Man

As long as I can remember, Maria - my sister's childhood best friend - always said she was going to be a doctor when she "grew up."  Well for the past 30 years, she's had "MD" after her name - she's the only person I've known who actually became what she said she wanted to be when she was a kid.

It's probably not surprising that so few kids grow up to reach those childhood career dreams. I mean if we did, the world would be filled with cowboys, princesses and astronauts!

At school this week, Gus wrote a short essay about what he hopes his future career will be. As in years past, he announced he wants to be an artist. Every time I hear that images of a La Boheme-lifestyle fill my head. Images of love and art and poverty and beauty and more poverty and creativity and still more poverty.

But this year he added a new career goal: professional hockey player.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.On the one hand, the very few truly gifted players, who make it into the pros have a short but usually quite lucrative career. On the other hand, for every million guys that put on skates maybe one makes it to the big leagues.

I guess with a professional hockey career there are upsides and downsides. The upside is that unlike the starving-artist Gus, the puck-slapping Gus would be sitting pretty in paycheck land. The downside is he'll need to pay someone to chew his food.