dad's view

Jeff Shelby is a full-time author and a stay-at-home Dad. Jeff's mystery novels, Wicked Break and Killer Swell, have both appeared on the Los Angeles Times and Denver Post best-seller lists. He also serves as a writer/reviewer on the book site, MyShelf.com.

She Would Be An Excellent Sled Dog Racer

January 6, 2009

“I want to be a sled dog racer,” my daughter announced recently.

“A sled dog racer?”

“Yes. We read a book at school today about a girl who races sled dogs. She has LOTS of dogs. And she wins her races. That’s what I want to be when I grow up. A sled dog racer.”

“Okay.”

“Daddy, what did you want to be when you were a kid like me?”

“A baseball player. A pitcher for the San Diego Padres.”

“So why aren’t you a baseball player?”

“Because I wasn’t good enough to play baseball as my job.”

“So you didn’t play baseball at all?”

“No, I played for a long time. But when I got to high school…”

“That’s the big school, right?”

“Yes, the big school. When I got to high school, I knew I probably wasn’t good enough to make baseball my job.”

“So what did you want to be then?”

“A lawyer.”

“What’s that?”

“A person who helps other people and charges them an enormous amount of money by the hour.”

“So were you a lawyer?”

“No. I worked in a law office for awhile and realized that I didn’t want to do that either.”

“Oh. So then what did you want to be?”

“Hmm. Right about then, I think I just wanted to be a college graduate.”

“What’s that?”

“Someone who takes a lot of classes and then gets a diploma that says you are supposedly good at something. It’s also someone who owes a lot of money.”

“So did you do that?”

“Yes. It took me a long time, but I finally did it.”

“And then what did you want to be?”

“Then I didn’t know. But your mom told me I had to get a job, so I started working with kids and teaching them sports.”

“A coach! You were a coach, right?”

“Yes. I coached basketball. And I was something called an athletic director. I helped organize all the sports at the school.”

“You coached all the big girls at the big school, right?”

“Yes. I coached high school basketball.”

“Mommy says you used to yell a lot.”

“Mommy, as usual, is right.”

“But then you weren’t a coach anymore.”

“No, because then I got to be a daddy.”

“My daddy, right?”

“Yes.”

“But now you’re a writer?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re a daddy AND a writer?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you a writer?”

“Because I like writing.”

“Have you always liked writing?”
“Yes.”

“Then why weren’t you always a writer?”

“Did your grandparents tell you to ask that?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, I always liked writing, but I wasn’t always sure it could be a job. But it is, so I’m lucky.”

“Are you going to be anything else?”

“I’ll probably be hungry in about half an hour.”

“No. I mean are you going to have another job?”

“I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see. I might like to be a teacher and I would like to coach basketball again.”

“You sure have been a lot of things.”

“Yep. I’ve also been a busboy, a waiter, a camp counselor, a tennis instructor, a file clerk, a person who scrubbed hospital mattresses – don’t EVER do that – and a person who puts books away at the library.”

“Well, I’m only going to have ONE job for my whole life and it’s going to be as a sled dog racer!”

“Really? What happened to wanting to be a cowgirl, a soccer player, a doctor, a farmer, a photographer and an artist? You’ve told me you were going to be all of those things.”

“Well, that was before I KNEW about sled dog racers. I couldn’t want to be something I didn’t know about.”

“What if there’s something else that you might want to be that you don’t know about? Something that might be even better than sled dog racing?”

Her eyes grew huge. “IS THERE?”

Only time will tell.