Living Dreams

Happy

One thing I learned in creative writing was I like typing more than writing by hand. It sounds stupid that it took me that long to learn that about myself but I’ve always been a bit late when it comes to understanding who I am and what I like. Which is why I am struggling now. I’m sitting in one final for a required class. It’s just a question written on the board. I clutch my little fingers around a wooden pencil, knowing the laptops are locked safely in the cart, staring blankly at the board. It doesn’t help that my recent illness has practically zombified me. The writing shakes as my vision quivers. That doesn’t matter though. It’s been looming in my mind and in the mind of every single junior and senior in this entire country for the longest time: what do you want to do when you grow up?

First of all, why is it that the first eighteen years of life are a free trial spent preparing for actual life? Second of all, why are they teaching us the difference between x and y when in real life you have to know the difference between a mortgage and a loan? Why does the word “mortgage” have “mort-” at the beginning, as in death? Why am I learning more from monopoly than I am from school! That’s not the ultimate question though. The ultimate question is the one, out of all of these, that I definitely will never be able to answer: what do you want to do when you grow up?

How can they expect us to know when we spend all of our time studying and doing homework and playing sports and having family commitments, and working jobs and taking tests and the whole lot? I get an hour to myself every day and it’s usually spent showering to scrub all of the stress off of my shaking body. Nevertheless, I pick up my pencil again and just roll with it.

Then I think about my other finals. I had just come out of creative writing. That was an easy one. You know why? The entire class is spent learning about stuff that I actually care about. I can’t learn if I’m not interested. And I discovered so much about myself in that class, partly what I wanted to do. I wanted to write. And I wanted to write for a reason. That’s what I ended up putting down on that borrowed sheet of lined paper.

Dear final question,

How dare you ask me what I want to do when I grow up? The next time you shove that question down some young adult’s throat, think about what you’re asking them, and how many times they’ve been asked.

On the other hand, seeing as my ability to carry out my answer to this question depends on passing this class, I’ll give you an answer.

It took me sixteen years, seven months, one week, six days, eight hours and fifty-two minutes to come up with a rough answer. I present to you the master plan, and I am going to give it to you in obituary format:

Paisley Wolfe dies today at the age of ninety-nine [The age at which Gretchen, my German great-grandmother passed away] from natural causes. She was surrounded by family at the time of her death. Wolfe was an accomplished novelist and essayist and most importantly a humanitarian. She started her long and successful career out as a journalist in her hometown of Manchester, New Hampshire and worked her way up to the New York Times. She then became a published author at the age of thirty-six. She went on to write over forty novels and essays in her lifetime, many of which became New York Times best sellers. At the age of sixty, she was elected to the president’s cabinet and turned the whole damn society around. Because of her, racism is obliterated, gay rights are without question, and full gender equality has been realized. She leaves behind a husband, two children, four grandchildren, and an entire world saddened by the loss of this great humanitarian. The end.

And I would just like to say to you, Final Question, that I got all of that out of creative writing. Not only did I gain the skills to build that future but that class helped me learn that that is what I want to do. I can’t say that about your class or any other class that I’ve taken in my life. What do you have to say to that, required class?

Sincerely,

Paisley Wolfe

I’m about to to turn it in but then I add something that I feel was needed. I can’t believe it. The most important aspect to my answer and I almost left it out.

PS. The final answer to your final question: I want to be happy. I am going to be happy.

And I turn in that piece of wonderful blissful anger with a sly smirk plastered on my tired face. I amuse myself sometimes.