When I Grow Up

My Future and Potential

By Jerry Rawls, Mrs. Whitman's Class, Grade 3

Everyone has potential. One day we will all grow up and get jobs. People can be whatever they want to be if they work hard. I will work hard and do good. I could be a pilot or a book writer or anything. What I want to do most when I grow up is kill Thomas Ridgley.

Thomas sits next to me and is mean. He knocked my Capri Sun out of my hand when I was holding it in my hand in the lunchroom at lunch and ever since then I have wanted to grow up so I can kill him. I also like cars and trucks, so I think I could be a good driver and that could be my job when I grow up. I would like to get a job driving a truck that's really big so that its tires can roll over Thomas' face.

When I went on a trip to Idaho we went on a tour of some caverns and a tour guide showed us around and told us about the place. Thomas made fun of the shirt my mom bought me at the gift shop and spit in my face and yelled at me. I think I would like to be a tour guide when I grow up and show people around a place like a cavern. Maybe Thomas would come to my cavern and I'd tell the rest of the group to go ahead and leave him behind in an unsafe room with lots of stalactites and dangerous spiders and rats and stuff. Plus I would get to wear shorts and a hat like Indiana Jones.

I like reading about lizards and snakes, so maybe I can grow up to be someone in charge of lizards and snakes. But I wouldn't show them to people at the zoo or anything, I'd just not feed them for a while and leave them in Thomas' house.

After Thomas pushed me in the woodchips at recess, I thought I would like to be a policeman. If I were a policeman when Thomas grew up, he wouldn't be able to push me around anymore, because I'd be the police. He'd have to do what I say because I'd be a policeman and I'd always be right. If I were a policeman, one day grown up Thomas could come home and find me in his house putting stuff around to make it look like he was selling drugs and taking pictures of children with no clothes on, and he'd be upset because he hadn't done these things. And he'd say he'd tell on me, and I'd ask him who exactly he would tell on me to, because I was the law. I would probably testify against him in court and I think the jury would believe me because I was a policeman. Thomas' grown up wife would be all sad and his children would disown him and he would have ten to fifteen years in jail to think about why he pushed me in the woodchips.

If this doesn't work I would like to be a veterinarian but only for dinosaurs.