What Do You Want to Smash When You Grow Up?

"You can be anything you want to be when you grow up." My parents repeated this to me many times as a child. By the time I reached kindergarten I had thought about it long and hard. This was obviously a big decision -- it was the third most-asked question by adults after "What's your name?" and "How old are you?" (and solidly ahead of the fourth most-asked, "Would you like a ride in my van?").

In order to narrow down my career choices I listed the qualities I wanted in my future profession:

• Power- I wanted to be able to control others and impose my will on them. This is a no-brainer. It was my firm belief that either you go big or you go home.
• Respect- Power without respect is a fool's game and only results in your eventual downfall. Plus I watched the Blues Brothers a lot that year and if Aretha wanted it, it was good enough for me.
• Height- I definitely wanted to be tall. My parents had obviously made poor career choices and went with jobs where you are short. I was not going to repeat their mistakes.

Now I bet you're saying "Joe - power, respect, height? You wanted to be President!" Dear reader, I would have to disagree completely. While it did cross my mind, I quickly dismissed the thought. I had seen what they did to poor Jimmy Carter, not to mention how they forced Reagan to wear all that makeup. And come on- did we all forget about James Madison? The man was 5' 4". No, President was not for me.

My choice was clear to me that day - when I grew up I wanted to be... a stop sign.

Standing tall at a busy intersection, everyone obeying my command and respecting the law. It was perfect. Plus, I looked really good in red.

I shared my plan to my teacher who was visibly disappointed in the news. "But you could be anything you want," she shouted, "Why not a business man or a fire hydrant?" I would not let myself be swayed and demanded I be placed on a pre-traffic device educational track.

Later on that week, my father, as is his paternal duty, killed my dream. He pointed out the fatal flaw in my plan - I did not know how to spell STOP. "Wait- that's a requirement of the job?" I asked, "No one told me there would be spelling involved." I had to quickly reassess. What other job had all the required traits and did not need spelling skills? Or even better - one where the very lack of spelling and grammar skills are actually a bonus? And then it hit me: The Hulk.

My plan was brilliant in its simplicity. I would grow up to be the Hulk. I would be powerful, I could demand respect, I would tower over my enemies- and I could speak in grammatically incorrect sentence fragments to my sweaty green content. Oh all the smashing I would do!

Throughout grade school I stuck to my plan - I practiced Hulk faces, tried to get angry and I remained vigilant in my search for a wholesale supplier of gamma rays. Later in high school I studied for the SATs in order to gain acceptance into a top smashing program at a private liberal arts college. My application essay was a work of art, and one I can still recite from memory: "Joe angry! Joe smash!"

Needless to say I had my choice of schools, but decided on Hobart College because of the idyllic setting, their excellent lacrosse team, and the secret gamma-ray bomb facility.

I started out my first year full of excitement about finally fulfilling my giant green angry dream. But my focus began to wane later that year. I got a part in a play, met some cute girls, and began to wonder if smashing is just a tool of the white Christian patriarchy to keep down the workers. Also other majors got to go on much better study-abroad programs. Smashing students only get to go to the savage planet Sakaar, and the beer there sucks.

So I became an English major and even learned to spell "stop" (though that ship had sailed a long time earlier). I met a nice women's studies minor, was educated in some of the finest drinking countries Europe has to offer, and forgot about my dreams.

Here it is years later- I work in marketing. No power, no respect, never get to smash anything.

Also I'm short.

George Washington was Imagined Here

Some of you may know George Washington as the father of our country, the face of the dollar bill, or the first and middle names of the inventor of peanut butter. But I remember George Washington, painfully, as my sister's childhood friend.

Being children during the bicentennial, we saw George everywhere and Roseann decided that they were going to be buddies. My sister is the type of person who gets what she wants, even when she was little. I'm not sure if she put in a call to his publicist or wrote him a heart-felt letter or blackmailed him with incriminating photos of him and a woman clearly not Martha, but somehow she and the former president became inseparable.

They would walk down the street together, she with her pig tails and he with his powdered hair, seeming the most unlikely pair. Adults would usually never remark on his presence, though Freemasons would nod at him with reverence or greet him by silently performing a series of secret handshakes.

This friendship turned out to be a very unfortunate thing for me. It's hard enough to being a younger brother - constantly harassed, controlled, forced to wear dresses - but try keeping one step ahead when your sister has one of the greatest American military strategists in her corner.

I had to throw away my beloved blankie after George had infected it with smallpox. He would hide his wooden teeth in my lunch box. Once he claimed he could never tell a lie and murmured "I'm not, not going to spit in your apple juice."

On top of that he was a very vain man considering he was around 250 years old. He commented on several occasions that both the quarter and Mount Rushmore made him look "paunchy" - not to mention that he would refer to the GWB as "The Me Bridge". And then there was the near ridiculous levels of nudging and winking any image of the Washington Monument would inspire.

The relationship between the former president and my sister drove me to a self-imposed loneliness that only ended when I decided to befriend none other than Greg Brady. On the day that I strode proudly into my sister's room to introduce my new wingman and perhaps to sing "It's a Sunshine Day", George was no where to be seen. Roseann pretended Greg wasn't even there, turned up a Toni Basil record and closed her door in my face.

After a few days I asked Greg to leave. With George Washington gone all of Greg's preening in front of the mirror and requests to be called "Johnny Bravo" got old fast.

My sister never did mention George again in later years, but once in a while I could catch her whistling "Yankee Doodle" when she thought no one was listening.

Origins

I was found, as an infant, in a Gimbels department store in New York in February 1976. It is, it seems, a pretty common story. Back in those days nearly all children were found somewhere - on doorsteps, in cabs, at the bottom of wells. Even though she didn't exactly want a second child my mother decided to take me home purely on the basis of Gimbels' extremely liberal return policy.

This return policy clearly states:

Children found in our stores may be returned at anytime up to the child's 18th birthday - for any reason, without exception.

Or at least it did state that until 1987 when all 36 stores were closed.

I don't mean to imply that the business failed because of the high cost of processing child returns - but it certainly didn't help. You have to remember, this is before the days of outlet stores and eBay. Precious shelf space ended up being wasted on low-demand products like returned 8-year-olds with bad attitudes. That sort of thing should not have beeen tolerated with Macy's breathing down their neck. My point is - the return policy was flawed.

My issues with the return policy aren't purely based on the poor business planning involved, but also partially from its constant invocation in our house:

"If you don't take your vitamins I will return you to Gimbels"

"If they give me store credit I could exchange you for some nice bath towels or maybe a foot massager"

"That's it - where did I put your receipt?"

And so on.

I had the last laugh when, at 7 years shy of my 18th birthday, there was no more Gimbels. The stores were all closed or sold off to companies with the foresight to stay out of the baby racket and maintain reasonable return policies.

Gimbels' closing coincided with sudden increase in inquiries from Gypsies interested in purchasing me. Now, I'm not sure what the Romani (a proud and noble people) wanted with a boy who never tied his laces and could neither tell the future nor pick pockets, but the offers came fast and furious. Part of me secretly wished the deal would go through. I thought I would look dashing with a head scarf. These requests did not last too long though, as the bottom fell out of the children market during the tail end of the savings and loan crisis.

Nowadays, when I am feeling nostalgic, I return to the Herald Square store where I was found. The building was turned into what is now the Manhattan Mall and the exact site of my discovery is half-way between a cell-phone accessory kiosk and an Auntie Anne's Pretzel. I buy myself a jalapeño pretzel, maybe some hot salsa cheese dipping sauce, and think of what might have been.