I could have been a contender

Hi, welcome to this week’s post! I don’t think I’ve got any housekeeping or interesting pre-post tidbits, so LET’S GO

I know it’s not healthy to hold grudges. We’re just creating tension and conflict within our bodies, because really, our Higher Self (or That Part Of You That Knows Better, or whatever you want to call it) is all about forgiveness and love and seeing the best in everyone. But christ on a cracker, some days that just doesn’t work for me.

Picture it: Orange County, CA, 1980. Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series airs on PBS and makes quite a splash. I was eleven, and watched it with my mom. I can’t remember if I watched every single episode all the way through, but I saw enough to be blown away by some of the concepts. “Infinite” was astounding to comprehend. And if the universe isn’t infinite, and “nothing” is outside it … Wait, what? I was awestruck by space and its simple complexities. I still am, but I also wonder if it’s just not meant for us to fully comprehend from the vantage point of physically manifested human consciousness… (I am okay with that because really it’s just as nice to sit outside on a spring day and look at flowers while eating a cookie.)

Sagan rocked a turtleneck way before Steve Jobs did.

ANYWAY, one day after seeing Cosmos, probably while eating breakfast at some restaurant, I announced to my mom and two of her friends that I wanted to be a cosmologist. That, dear reader, is someone who studies the nature and origin of the universe. I offer that definition here because I know what you’re thinking.

After declaring my newly formed career goal, I got laughed at.

“Yes,” said my mom’s friend, “you’ll make an excellent cosmetologist!”

“Ha ha ha ha!” said everyone.

I don’t recall thinking this was very funny at the time, and now I find it even less funny.

What if, instead of laughing at me and making jokes about being a “cosmetologist” for several months, my mom had encouraged me to take that desire seriously? Maybe gotten me few books on related topics, suitable for a pre-teen?

What if I’d been encouraged to pursue STEM classes?

In the early ’80s, a lot had already changed for women who wanted careers and sought a different life other than being a homemaker (and I’m generalizing, of course), but the climate also wasn’t like it is today. I don’t seem to remember girls being encouraged to go into the sciences. (Does anyone remember otherwise? If so, I’d like to hear from you.)

But still. I wonder why no one saw something I was so interested in as a legitimate pursuit.

That said, I didn’t like math from middle school on. In my senior year of high school, I dropped out of calculus at the semester to become a teacher’s aide to avoid getting a C. Biology was great (I have some weird spectrumy ability to give you lots of facts about sea creatures, coastal environments, and tide pools, no idea where all that came from), chemistry was okay, and I avoided physics.

Photo from my senior yearbook. “Calculus Club.” I have no idea what all that stuff on the board is, and I didn’t then either.

But maybe it’s not all about math anyway? What if it’s about learning to think in abstract terms, to think big, or conversely, infinitesimally small? What if getting wrapped up in the minutiae were a superpower?

Regardless, it was not in the stars, so to speak. Maybe things would’ve turned out differently if it had been treated as a legitimate pursuit. I’ll never know, but just as I wonder how stars are formed, I wonder how different things could have been.

The other day I recounted this story to my partner, along with the observation that I could have turned out to be an astrophysicist, for all we know. My dear partner kindly pointed out that I probably wouldn’t have become an astrophysicist because those jobs are reserved for the super-duper smart people. Meaning not me.

It took me a full 24 hours to digest that comment and inform him that this was insulting. I’m a little slow sometimes, but I do eventually get there. I told him that there’s no way he could say for sure whether or not I’d have succeeded in becoming a damn cosmologist, thank you very much.

I know he meant well, but it was an extension of having gotten snubbed at age eleven. He said okay fine, you’re right, and probably filed the whole thing in the “Andrea is maybe a little unstable” barrel. (It’s way bigger than a box.)

As you’ve probably figured out, I didn’t end up being a cosmologist. But I didn’t end up as cosmetologist either, and that’s a good thing because my sense for beauty/fashion/skincare is abysmal. I probably know less about how to take care of my hair than I do about the origins of the universe.

Is there anything you regret not studying or pursuing when you were younger? What if you did it now?

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Thanks for reading!

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