What did you want to be

kuepper said:
As a trainspotter til I was about 12 (1960) and Boro fan, I wanted to be a (steam) train driver or centre forward for Boro (or in summer Freddie Trueman). What else was there? I could never understand how other kids knew more of the 'real' world outside school. I remember some kids saying they wanted to be a solicitor or a journalist or whatever and thinking how do they know that? Obviously my class / life experience was different to theirs - my dad a furnace bricklayer at Dormans in Grangetown and mam sewing in a sweatshop somewhere
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Flippin' eck Keuper. You always come across as a lot younger that that, or even me, and I am 67
 
Believe it or not, since the age of 14 I desperatly wanted to work for ICI

All down to my Boro mad dad, i've told my story on here before

When I was 14/15, probably like any other kid, I didnt have a clue what career path I wanted, apart from playing for the Boro, I had no idea
Our dad would take me & my younger brother to Boro home games, he would go in the bobend, us in the boysend, later the holgate
One monday after arriving home from work he told me & my brother to make our own way to the match the next night as he's on 2x10
The next day (tuesdays back then) at about 7 me & my brother were getting ready to walk to AP when our dad walked through the front door, right lads are you ready!?
He'd got a flyer, what time did he leave to walk through the door just after 7, I remember saying to my dad, I want to work at ICI if they let you get away early for Boro games

It just stuck, I left school & worked on numerous chemical sites, Wilton, Monsanto, Casell works, etc all contracting, I went for a few ICI tests, interviews, but each time I failed until 1986 when I was successful & still here to this day & all because my dad got a flyer

PS - Apart from 6 months when we were in administration, I can count on one hand how many days I've not wanted to go to work, though even those dark days I enjoyed going, just the dark clouds & uncertainty hanging over us, thankfully a company came in & took us over

You here often at work, how ya doing, with a sarcastic reply, living the dream, I actually have been

Count myself very lucky TBH
 
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We were early movers to Park End when I was 5 and the place was still being built - it was like one giant building site. Dumper trucks were being driven everywhere - the small type used for carrying waste and materials. I dreamt every night of driving one of these except mine had Christmas fairy lights draped round it. I never did get to drive one, but could do with one in the garden at the moment to move my logs around.
 
Throughout childhood, I always wanted to be a policeman but after coming to Oz then returning to England only
to return to Oz some four years later all by way of ship, I was seriously considering joining the Oz navy.

I was fifteen when we arrived back in Oz in Dec 69 and was facing having to start yet another school at my parents insistence.
My childhood years saw me attend schools in England, Perth, Sydney, England, Philadelphia, England and was now facing another
year here in Sydney all for the sake of a school certificate.

Within a couple of days of arriving in Sydney I went for a walk to Coogee beach and as I approached the beach I noticed a sign in
a butcher shop window " first year apprentice wanted"
I walked in and told the butcher that I have come to apply for the job. " So you wanna be a butcher d'ya ?. I hadn't given it more than
ten seconds thought from the moment that I first saw the sign but I nodded that I did. Such was my determination to avoid having to
start yet another school and once again having to start from scratch.

My parents were furious when I finally found the courage to break the news to them and after telling them of my starting time on Monday
and my father had stopped laughing, he said to my mam, " Don't worry pet, he'll be fed up in a couple of days, he'll be ready to go back
to school before the school holidays are over.
He was oh so wrong. I was loving it. I had money of my own for the first time in my life and even better was the fact that we had female
customers wearing the tiniest of bikinis. A fifteen year old boy couldn't have asked for anything more exciting than what I experienced daily.

My dreams of becoming a policeman or joining the navy when I finished my apprenticeship were shattered when I told my Aussie friends
and workmates of my plans.
The Aussie interpretation of a policeman or a seaman was obvious to me when they all asked me the same question. " What are ya, a Pig
or a Poof?"

God only knows what would have become of me had I not gone to the beach that day but I can safely say that the chance of me becoming
a butcher would have been highly unlikely. I can't be so sure though that if I did go back to school and stayed until I was eighteen that there
would have been a good chance that I would have been classed by my Aussie mates as a " Pig or a Poof."

Thank god I went for a swim that morning. 🤣
 
Pilot.

Not good enough for that, but lucky enough to do 18 years in the RAF as a Movements Officer (in charge of loading/unloading aircraft etc), loved it.

Next best thing for me.
 
I wanted to be Rocky Balboa. Literally spent most of my Y2 classes drawing pictures of him and shadow boxing at break time. Stopped that pretty soon once I realised I was nowhere near the hardest in the school.
 
Fireman.

Finally took the test a few years back to be a part time/on call fireman.

Even though I pasted all the physical tests, I realised that I wasn't comfortable in confined spaces. Probably mildly claustrophobic.

About a year later, drove past a car crash and saw the firemen cutting out people from the wreckage.

Definitely wasn't for me.
 
Palaeontologist. I was dinosaur mad as a kid. Used to go fossil hunting, mostly at Saltburn and a few other local beaches and I recently found some fantastic ammonites at my parents old place that I collected in the 80’s and early 90’s. Unfortunately I haven’t seen anything similar at Saltburn for years since Jurassic Park popularised the topic and the professional fossil hunters swept em all up!
 
Always hoped to join the RAF and either fly or fix aircraft. Eyesight and lack of qualifications meant I joined the RAF aged 16, as an aircraft engineer. I did 18 years service and now at the age of 50, I’m still working on jets and loving my job.
 
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I always wanted to be a truck driver as a kid. Then ended up leaving school with horrific exam results so worked at Morrisons for a year. Simply not for me.

So went into forces careers office to join the infantry. The army guy wasn't in so chatted with the Navy representative. 4 months later I joined the navy and served 23 years.

I often think what if that Army guy had been around? I would have have served in the 2nd gulf War and various afgan deployments.... A weird 'sliding doors' moment. Either would have massively reduced my chances of being around or fit today.

Defo 'sliding doors'...
 
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