Awesome people who give me subconcious lifts

As I was thinking about the list list list of things I want to be when I grow up, I realized that for every item, I have a person who I acquaint with that particular skill. I didn’t necessarily know them when I made the list, but I like that I can correlate. (Although, as we all know from Psych 101, correlation does not mean causation.)

1. Midwifery. My friend Kim is a doctor, and she gets to deal with people’s bodies all the time. Supercool.

2. Trucker. My aunt Lora did this, and she’s about the best general role model a person could have.

3. Sign language. I met Amber after writing the list, but I think it’s one of the reason why I took to her like a prestidigitous kitten to a toy piano.

4. Teach for America. My AmeriCorps teammate Jenn is TFAing right now. Much like midwifery, you are in charge of people’s children, under various amounts of pressure. (Sometimes the kid, sometimes me.)

5. Children’s librarian. I would not be pursuing this career if it weren’t for my elementary school mentor, Ms. Bernard. JUST KIDDING! She was scary. My mom was a children’s librarian when I was a kid, and it was the best job ever. If I could be the children’s librarian for the Francis Banta Waggoner Community Library in DeWitt, Iowa, I would. The quilt she made for snuggly window-seat reading is still there.

6. Masseuse. My friend Alaethia is studying Oriental medicine right now, which is way more complex and advanced than just massage, but when we talk about it, I get all excited and squiggly.

7. Canoe Mississippi. Pebbles (Em) is the most hard core, crunchy, granola, sweet-fern-tea drinkin’, outdoorsy outside cat I know. Her passion for canoeing nears a fever pitch. She doesn’t want an engagement ring, she wants a canoe tied to her finger.

8. Master knitter. My grandma taught me how to knit, as well as crochet, sew, embroider, tat (who even knows what that is?!), and refer to snacks as much needed “medicine”. She’s nonchalant about makin’ stuff, but it’s always functional. That epitomizes what I want to be as a knitter.

9. Live in far Northeast. Again with the Pebbles. Her aunt learned masonry and built herself a 16-sided stone house in Maine. I want to live there, near Pebs, and go fishing a lot.

10. Master some other language. Alena seems to slip and fall into pools of language, and when she gets up, she’s fluent. She started college with Spanish, and somehow ended up with a Russian major. RUSSIAN!

So, those are people in my neighborhood who have affected me, either previous to the much esteemed list, or have been Celestine-Prophecy-like drawn to me, possibly because we have shit in common.