Being Ginger Grant  

When I was in grade three
I had a studied response
To the favourite question of grownups everywhere:
“what do you want to be
when you grow up?”

With a level gaze, I’d look them straight in the eye
And reply
That I wanted to be a teacher
Or Ginger Grant.

The teacher thing was a given.
Being a teacher would mean I’d get to draw all day
on the board with chalk.
Real kids
And not just the stuffed animals I’d line up on the couch
Would have to listen to me while I talked.
The job would come with an unlimited supply of gold and red and blue stars
And of course, at the time,
my actual grade three teacher
Was, to me, the coolest person in the whole world.

Well, the second coolest maybe--
Second only to a real star:
Ginger Grant
The movie star
And one of seven stranded castaways
There on Gilligan’s Island.

I would gladly trade in my chalk erasers
For a shimmering and form fitting
Floor length evening gown
And heels
Sure the heels weren’t so good for running in sand
But who cares, because I had millions of adoring fans
Or I would, if I could get myself off the island.

My hair would always be perfect
One auburn strand coyly swept over a bedroom eye.
My Marilyn Monroe beauty mark
Would wiggle coquettishly when I talked
About all the movies I made with Cary Grant,
And all the men who loved me in Hollywood.

What would a job like being Ginger Grant pay?
At least enough to buy all the gorgeous gowns she had stored away
And those were just the ones she brought on the boat
For a three-hour tour.

I was sure that being Ginger Grant would bring in millions,
So I never quite understood why grownups grinned
When I explained that she
would be
my future vocation.

Things changed as I got older
And so did my aspirations.
In grade 9 I wanted to be a vet
Because my mom had always denied me a pet
But I soon changed my mind
When I heard you needed to maintain good grades in math
And science.

In high school I didn’t really want to be anything.
I just wanted soak up rays in the park
Dreaming about boys and graduation
And the boy who would take me to graduation
In the ’75 Pinto he borrowed from his mom.

Eighties movies and TV shows like Thirtysomething
Where everyone seemed to work in advertising
Led me to a two year college program in Advertising and Public Relations
Upon college graduation
I learned that a job in an ad agency wasn’t the paid vacation
That TV pretended it to be.
Sure, everyone wore pastel suits
But I found out the hard way
That the job entailed much more than rolling up balls of paper
And playfully throwing them into office-sized basketball hoops.

Eventually I became a freelance writer
But I’m not writing the great Canadian novel
Or interviewing famous rock singers
Or spouting out immortal zingers
Like “Coke is it” or “Barq’s has bite”?
A large part of my time is spent finding new ways to rephrase “cutbacks”
Or say “facilitate”
But I’d be lying if I said I hated it.

I’ve come a long way from grade three
When I wanted to be
A teacher.
I can’t even teach my cat to keep his claws off the couch
Or my husband to replace the toilet paper on an empty roll.

But I can still have fun as a writer
Especially on those slow days
When I can discreetly maneuver a strand of hair
Sweep it across my come-hither gaze
And pucker my lips in the mirror
And kiss the reflection of the girl in grade three
Who didn’t yet know the meaning of the word can’t
And dreamed unabashedly
about growing up to become Ginger Grant.

© 2006 Jan Mann