Be a marine!

I spent one afternoon with my colleague and his friend and 1.5 year old son. We did some fun budget review while playing with the child which I of course loved even if it mostly involved the kid in my lap briefly chewing on my food before returning it to my plate and strangling me while grasping my shiny necklace.  Small prices to pay for some toddler time. I’d venture to say that all mundane business tasks should be livened up with a little child.

Anyway, the point of this story is that the kid’s Dad kept saying he wants his kid to grow up to be a Marine. I assumed there was some Ugandan Marine Corps or something but actually, he aspires to have a son who joins the American Marine Corps. This struck me as odd- it’s rare that you hear about people wanting their progeny to grow up to fight for another country. Most of all, my inner liberal-arts-free-spirit wanted to be sure that the child wasn’t stifled by his father’s vicarious aspirations. Don’t you think we should rule out that he’s not the next Mozart, Gandhi, Monet, Dalai Lama, Mandela, Einstein, or Pasteur before we ship him right into the Marine Corps?