What job did you want to have when you were a kid?
For me, the answer was “inventor.”
I wanted to build robots and cool spy gadgets. I couldn’t really understand why nobody had thought of making a car that could fly yet, but I figured I could handle that easily once I reached adulthood, or at least 13. My greatest triumph in science class came in 8th grade, when I had to build a mousetrap demonstrating the use of simple machines. The minimum was 5; mine had 60+.
It was this obsession with all things Rube Goldberg that led me to one of my worst parenting blunders in recent memory. My 5 year old daughter asked how a Rubik’s cube is made, and so I did a quick search on Youtube for “Rubik’s factory.” I figured I’d get something like the unforgettable peanut butter factory featured on Sesame Street when I was little: lots of sleek machines with automatic arms passing plastic cubes from one conveyor belt to the next:
Instead, I got a video of workers sitting at endless rows of tables holding tweezers and painstakingly piecing together cubes by hand. It was a sweatshop. I tried another video. Same thing.
“Well, I guess this is actually how they do it,” I mumbled to my daughter, and tried to change the subject.
But she was enthralled.
“I want to do that when I grow up,” she told me confidently a day later.
“What?”
“Build Rubik’s cubes.”
“No, honey, that’s…” I struggled for words. “Not really an option.”
But it soon became clear that this has become her Dream Job. At school, she draws pictures of herself at a table with a pile of brightly colored cubes, a big smile on her face.
So that’s her new ambition in life. I guess I should be proud that she has a goal in life. How many people can say that?