Crazy Hip Blog Mamas have a collaboration blog going about childhood dreams. My dreams did come true, sort of, but they sure took a circuitous route.

When I was a child, my parents let me and my siblings be children. They didn’t pressure us to do well in school or to really prepare for our futures. They cared, of course, but not in a pressure-cooker way.

So when I was five years old and told them I wanted to be a clown when I grew up, a real, legitimate clown, they were fine with it. Sure, I was five. But I was serious. I think it was Mardi Gras that inspired this in me–the parades had a lot of clowns making balloon animals for us kids. This dream lasted for many, many years.

Once I got to high school, I began to rethink this working-for-a-living plan I had. I recall being a Freshman and the topic in class was careers. I whispered to my best friend, “I will marry and he will be the head of my household. I won’t have a job.” And that was my new dream: to be a Mrs. Husband; married with children. I’d even started to practice signing my first name with the last name of my dream beau (which girl didn’t do this?).

But then I started to think maybe that tall glass of water of a man wasn’t going to show up in time and I’d need to work for a bit. So I started to think practically–dental hygienist, paralegal, writer, journalist, manager of a hotel….

When I was a Senior in high school, my parents sent me to Johnson O’Connor to have my aptitudes tested. My father had recently lost his job and was considering a career change and went to Johnson O’Connor himself. What he really took away from the testing was that he would have more greatly benefited by what he learned had he learned it years earlier. So he sent his children at a time when it could make a difference.

Now, I am not talking about the quick, couple-of-hours aptitude testing you get done on campus. No; Johnson O’Connor ran a slew of tests over two days. At the end, my mother and I sat down to hear my future.

In a nutshell, I was told that I didn’t have the finger dexterity to be a dental hygienist and that I was an analytical thinker and would get bored being a manager of anything. My reading skills were strong, math, not so much. But I was good with problems–math or otherwise. I like puzzles and do well at solving them. It was recommended that I be a lawyer–a problem solver with problems that are constantly changing.

Of course, my mother was delighted with this news. I was rather devastated. I hadn’t even started college and the thought of law school made me shudder. My parents, true to their nature, did not pressure me. They let me major in Business Management in college without any criticism.

And as college was coming to a close, and I had thoroughly enjoyed the few law courses my Management curriculum afforded me, that seed planted years ago began to sprout. Before I knew it, I had taken the LSAT and was accepted into the only law school for which I had applied. I have been practicing law for over ten years now.

And along the way, I did fall in love and marry. He was once a professional clown. He can still juggle and make balloon animals.

We have one child.

But I am not Mrs. Sarcastic. I did not take his name.