Time polled a thousand children, ages 9 to 13, about various things.
What jumped right out at me is that their grading of President Obama’s first year is anything but exceptional: More than half are Bs or Cs, while there are almost as many Fs as As. The median grade would probably be a B-.
The most likely answer for desired careers was professional athlete among the boys, and teacher among the girls. Proving that girls are more mature at that age — more realistic about their career paths. I, too, had the professional athlete dream — Even through the summer I was 10 years old, I realistically imagined myself in a St. Louis Cardinals uniform. But by the next summer, some of the same boys that I was better than the summer before got better than me. So at the age of 11, could deduce that the MLB wasn’t in the Cards for me, so to speak. I was barely good enough to make the baseball team in high school, but I was by no means a standout player. I knew all along that I was doing it just for fun, and that baseball was the first thing to fall under the cracks if one developed. Because I had too much on my plate during Senior Year, I didn’t even go out for baseball that year.
While the same percentage of boys and girls fashioned themselves as doctors, twice as many girls said they wanted to be vets. Being a vet is harder than being a doctor, because animals can’t tell you where it hurts or specific symptoms. Otherwise, it’s the same number of years in school, and the cirriculum is even harder, because you have to be familiar with the anatomy of many kinds of animals, and not just human beings.
Boys aged 9-10 send an average of three txtmsgs a day, girls that age send 4. In the 11-13 age range, that number increases to 11 for boys and 24 for girls. WTF are 9-year olds doing sending txt msgs? I really don’t think a child that young should be so communicative. If it were my 9-year old, they might have a cell phone, but it would be really restricted in its capabilities.
[...] boyhood dreams of a grandiose profession rent asunder when you become a young adult man. (Or, in my case, the next summer.) It’s another thing never to have these dreams at all as a boy. Must have been a pretty [...]
[...] (7) I was the best player on my B/C baseball team the summer I was 10 years old, too. I told you before in this space how that turned out in the long run. [...]
[...] TV ads seemed sportier and made greater use of athletic pursuits, and to someone who, at the time, still seriously imagined himself in a St. Louis Cardinals uniform at the present time, it hooked me.) Don’t forget, as you can read, I was using this stuff [...]