A career choice

• Sam Walters, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2004

Even when I was in kindergarten I looked forward to a medical career. Remember show-and-tell? I recall my classmates lugging in Barbie dolls and toy trucks while children asked, “wheeere do you keep it?” Everybody loved this…except me. On a particularly boring day I couldn’t handle anymore. I stood up and performed cartwheels! It was either that or a mental breakdown.

I was definitely interested in the human body, so when it was my show-and-tell I presented a medical book. I told the children about our nervous system and explained that if you are sitting next to someone and repeatedly bump them, you only feel it the first time because the message doesn’t get all the way to the brain the second time. I also explained about the taste buds. Some of them didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. Actually, none of them did… except the teacher, who was fascinated. It was at this point that I knew I wanted to be a doctor but I didn’t know what kind.

Sometime after this, I decided I wanted to be a surgeon, so my grandmother gave me surgical videos. She also wrote me a list of different kinds of surgeons one can become. My freaky old grandmother included tree surgeons!

Another time this career urge got me was when Pop died. A doctor had to guess what bug was killing him and very quickly. He wore different coloured socks and he had hair as wild as a lion, like mine. He reminded everyone else of me. I wondered if I might be a bug doctor.

Last year I was laying in the emergency room with appendicitis, wondering what type of doctor would attend me. Then in came two doctors to discuss my illness. One of them was really cool and used unprofessional words, though in a funny way, words like ‘stickadee-thing’. She seemed to have such an interesting job and I realised it could also be fun. On our way home I just knew I had found what I wanted to become. I couldn’t’ stop exclaiming, “that’s what I want to be!”

After this realisation, I enquired about their salary. Mum instructed me to concentrate on the good they do. After further harassing, my mother became upset and advised me, the money shouldn’t matter. I countered, it didn’t and that I figured if I was paid enough money I could work less and relax more. Apparently I am a life-styler.

To this day I definitely want to be an emergency room doctor. So be nice to me, all you healthy little people. You may think your arteries are alright now but when you come to the hospital with a heart attack because of all those cream buns and other garbage blocking your arteries, it might be me chopping you up and we wouldn’t want the knife to slip, would we!