Kelly Kazek

Fourteen very short years ago, my little girl knew exactly what she wanted to be when she grew up.

Dreams of being a princess, ballerina or Aerobics Instructor Barbie were not good enough for my baby girl.

No, 3-year-old Shannon said with certainty she would be: “A garbage truck driver.”

Hmmm. Government benefits, a retirement plan, fresh air — she’d be upwind, after all— and she wouldn’t need to spend money on a work wardrobe.

She had given it some thought.

But by age 6, she’d changed her mind. She wanted to be a “modeler,” which made sense because, since age 2, if a camera were anywhere near — even in someone’s purse or hermetically sealed safe — she would turn toward it, cock her head to its most flattering angle, flash a perfect smile and then say, “I’ll need two 8-by-10 glossies of that for my portfolio.”

Now, Shannon is trying to decide what major to study when she goes to college next year.

Hang on. Let me restart my heart. Those last six words are likely to be the end of me.

Shannon is 17. Does she really need to know what she wants to spend the next 50 years doing?

Y’all know how I hesitate to voice my opinion, right? So I told her what to do: Go to college for four years, spend $80,000 on a degree in a certain field and then find a job doing something entirely different.

That’s what everyone else does.

What did she think I was going to do with my degree in English without a teaching certificate? It’s not like I could find a job walking around correcting people’s grammar and whiting out incorrect apostrophes on signs.

I try to encourage her to think outside the college handbook. There are thousands of jobs no one ever tells you about. For example, who, exactly, puts Cheez Whiz in the can?

Who checks the potato chips and pulls out any burned ones? Who writes the fortunes on those tiny pieces of paper inside Chinese cookies? Who taste-tests dog food? Who removes the gum from beneath school desks and park benches? Who does the laughing for television laugh tracks?

OK, so they may not all be glamorous (except for that Cheez Whiz one) but someone has to do these jobs. I think Shannon needs to consider all her options, that’s all I’m sayin.’

Had I known I could have been a “non-attorney spokesperson” on TV, or the coach of an Olympic curling team, my life might have gone in an entirely different direction.

Maybe Shannon could be an inventor but I’m not sure if it’s in her genes. Whoever invented the Obama-head Chia Pet is raking in the coin while I can’t figure out how to patent my idea for upper-arm-flab girdles. Shannon did have a great-great grandfather who was an inventor. Of course, we also had a distant cousin who painted glass eyeballs, but I just couldn’t see me in that line of work.

Not that I’m thinking of myself or anything, but I think Shannon should go in the direction of the food industry: She could be an ice cream taster or a jelly donut filler.

I noticed online someone had a job described as “truffle hunter” and I wondered why in the heck I’ve been doing that for free all these years. I can find ’em most anywhere, even melted to the bottom of the sofa cushions. In fact, I think there’s some smeared on my keyboard right now.

OK, got it. Mmmm, raspberry.

What a great opportunity for Shannon, I thought, until I realized the term referred to hunting rare, edible, mushroom-like things that grow in the dirt and not yummy chocolate confections.

Oh, well. Shannon may have to fall back on something more traditional, like Ginsu knife tester or Pringles stacker.

As long as she doesn’t go into my line of work, we’ll be fine.

Who wants someone in your family airing your personal business all the time?

Don’t miss Kelly Kazek’s new book on Athens and Limestone County.