When I grow up...

I still use that phrase all the time. “When I grow up, I’m gonna….” But it meant more ages and ages ago, when a little Liz roamed the earth, wanting to do and be everything! It seems like every week I wanted to be something new. It’s hard to even remember them all, but here are a few of the biggest:

I’ve always loved writing and used to want to write plays or books. Some of my most famous works include the play that my fourth grade class acted out, “Tommy Tomato,” in which a journalist goes all around town reporting on a giant tomato that’s attacking the town. Or you may have heard of my first novel, “All These Rabbits,” based on the true story of my best friend’s rabbit’s babies.

I wanted to be the first woman President for a while (around when I was president of my student council and thought I was powerful.)

I wanted to be Lois Lane and carry a cool brief case with a big notepad.

There was the archeologist phase, back when the rock tumbler was cool and I collected gemstones.

I was obsessed with weather for a while and wanted to be a weather forecaster. Not necessarily a “weather girl,” but I liked extreme weather and clouds.

Then of course there was always the beauty queen thing. I remember watching Miss America and Miss USA with my family and performing my walk and wave for them. That’s a scary one.

After seeing behind the scenes at The Today Show for the first time way back in middle school, I thought I would love to be a TV producer of some kind. That morphed into wanting to be a music producer or manager. I actually almost went to college for music business management, but thankfully I realized early on that wouldn’t work.

I know there are a lot more, and I’m hoping that when my dad reads this (because he always does) maybe he’ll remember a few others to tell me about (and perhaps have a better baby picture for me).

I did not expect this, but a lot of the things I wanted to do when I was little actually correlate quite nicely with what I want to do now. Writing, leading, weather, producing, the cool brief case (every job needs a cool accessory of some sort.) All of it could work in the broadcast communications field.

Now if I could only get “Tommy Tomato” to Broadway…