Alternate Reality #2

In early November, I mused a bit about what I’d like to be when I grow up. We dream about things as kids and precious few of us ever get the chance to play out our dreams in real life. Sometimes that’s actually a good thing. As exciting as it sounded at the time, I don’t think my true calling was in waste management. Other times, perhaps it’s not. So I thought I’d take a few posts (not in a row) to explore some of the possibilities in greater detail. Welcome to Alternate Reality #2.

Rewind your clocks to 19*cough*cough*, my senior year in high school. I was in my second semester of architecture, and perhaps still seriously thinking about it as a career. I entered one of my designs in the school’s annual Frank Lloyd Wright contest and actually won a coveted “runner up” award. Sure, I didn’t win a medal or anything, but you should have seen me shouting in your face! to all the lowly honorable mentions.

At the end of the year, the architecture teacher wrote in my yearbook, “To Charlie: A winner! A designer of tomorrow!” That may have been just his boilerplate yearbook dedication, but I took it to heart. I really did want to design stuff. Unfortunately my career was cut short when I poked my finger with a mechanical pencil. You can clearly see the severity of the career-ending wound. It’s hard to believe that this many years later, that tiny bit of graphite is still visible to the naked eye.

Never mind the fact my career was actually cut short because I really didn’t feel like producing mechanical drawings for a living. Sure, I was better than average at it, but you have to be waaaaay better than “better than average” to get anywhere in the design field.

But that was back when everything was done on vellum with real ink. Dangerous finger-poking pencils were still in common use and not under the heavy regulations we have today. If I’d just come into the field ten or fifteen years later, I would have been using ‘puters instead. That might have changed everything. I mean, I can do anything with a computer. I’ve created lolcat pictures. I’ve written several books. And you might be amazed to learn this: but I even blog using a computer. I know!

So who’s to say! I might have looked upon life as an architect using software tools in a completely different light. I might have really enjoyed it—even gotten excited about it. “I’m gonna build things!” I might have said. “I’m gonna build air fields. I’m gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high. I’m gonna build bridges a mile long…”

Or I might have said, “I wonder how this software works? Sounds fascinating. I wonder if maybe I should have gone into computer programming?” If that had happened, we might be reading a very different blog post of mine today. Maybe even one written in pen and ink on vellum. So maybe it’s best things turned out the way they did.

If you missed the first part of this series, here you go. You might recognize the opening paragraph. And check it out, Tuscany, I didn’t mention food once the entire post! Aw crud, except for just then.

Dang it!

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