Tekkah.net

It’s Girl Talk Thursday, and today’s theme is ‘what did you want to be when you grew up?’ And oh man, there’s nothing I love more than a good ramble.

Seriously, it’s going to be a ramble.

When I was a kid, I wanted to do everything. I really did. Depending on the time of day, my plans for the future were anything from “a one-name pop star like Madonna” to “a marine biologist” to, on the best of days, “in charge of everything.” I used to have fantasies of being the first lady President, of being an Olympic gymnast, of being a Broadway star, of flying airplanes, of living on a houseboat and writing novels… all kinds of things. The one-name pop star thing had wings for a long time, actually, I was convinced that my debut album (of Mariah Carey-esque power ballads — the really juicy 90s kind, obviously) would be this great pop-art thing with my signature just plastered in giant type diagonally across the front in bright red, a kicky photo of me doing some cheerful dance move behind it. I had plans, see.

But the truth of the matter — and this is still true, honestly, to this very day — is that when I grew up, I wanted to be Indiana Jones. Of all the future plans I had, this was the meatiest of them. This was what I wanted to do. I wanted to save mythical things from evil, freedom-hating, non-Democratic boogeymen, because that’s what Indy does! He saves priceless relics from Nazis and Communists! He’s like the Batman of Eurocentrism, I tell you!

Ah, Indiana Jones. He’s so sexy with his hat and his whip and his job. He’s a professor! He’s a teacher! I guarantee you had I been the appropriate age to portray one of his students in the movie, I’d have been the girl up front with “I love you” written creepily across my eyelids (say what? You don’t remember her? What’s wrong with you!?). The man had screaming hordes at his office hours! It was like Beatlemania but for one man! That’s impressive teaching, right there. In all my years in academia I’ve never seen anything even remotely like it, even when the teacher was the hottest thing in all of TRMS — oh, Algebra I. Best class ever. Couldn’t tell you squat about the math these days, though…

But I digress. Where were we? Oh. Indy.

Best of all? His hobby. He was a teacher by profession, see, but in his spare time he went gallivanting around the world finding impossible, legendary treasures and bringing them home because “they belong in a museum.” Now, that is, in itself, up for debate, to be sure, but honestly when faced with the options most of Indy’s relics were faced with (a museum… or the personal collection of someone like Adolf Hitler), I’d say they belonged in museums, too.

Now, I can’t say that a big part of me wasn’t utterly enchanted by Harrison Ford’s gorgeous face, or that another part of me wasn’t completely hypnotized by the grail theme in The Last Crusade (seriously, that’s one of the most gorgeous pieces of scoring John Williams has ever done — It comes in at 0:43, I dare you not to get chills), but yeah. I wanted to be Indiana Jones when I grew up, and I still sort of do.

Hell, it looks like I’m actually going to be a professor when all is said and done. The question is, will my students mob my office hours? Probably not — though that’s probably for the best.