opportunities missed

I was having lunch today with a group of ladies celebrating one friend's birthday.  As we were talking one woman said, out of the blue, "If I could be 18 again I'd want to be a wonderful dancer."  Another woman chimed in with a similar sentiment and talked about how much she enjoyed "Dancing With the Stars". I was a little shocked at my strong internal reaction to these comments. I don't think I would ever want to go back to the great unknown of being 18.  All day, I've been musing on this question and began to think about what I would have liked to do with my life if I had known more about the wide world when I went off to college way back in 1965. Mind you I've had a wonderful life so this is just daydreaming. I grew up in a small town where the approved options for women who didn't get married right out of high school were to become a secretary (or clerk in a store) or go on for more education and become a nurse or a teacher. I opted for teacher but, when I think about it, I think I would have liked to be an archaeologist or a commercial artist. My father, who quit school at 16 to go to work with his father, was a carpenter all his life.  He had a great love of reading and was an intelligent man so when he made a casual comment one day that he had never really wanted to be a carpenter I asked what job he would have liked. I was expecting an answer like teacher or librarian. His answer "I always wanted to be a plumber." Who knew?