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In Space, Smiling

by Adam Peterson

I know now that there are things I will never be. I will never be a cowboy or a baseball player or a dog. I will never be a person who can be loved or one who has had Korean food. When I was born, I said I could be anything, and my parents believed me. I designed long, complicated business cards that detailed precisely the things I would become. When I gave my parents the card, they handed me their own. My mother’s said nurse and had a red cross on it. My father’s said snake handler, and it was the first one he had ever given away. I added nurse and snake handler to my own card because I loved my parents and wanted to continue our family’s legacy of nursing and snake handling.

Now my parents are dead, and I have given up many dreams. For example, I will never be an astronaut even though on my business card there is a drawing of myself in space, smiling. I am not smiling because of the large Neapolitan ice cream cone I am holding or the space pony I am riding through the stars. These are just props. I am smiling because in the picture I am an astronaut. If I’d lived my life differently, that could really be me. Instead, ponies are afraid when I approach, and I don’t even like two out of the three flavors in Neapolitan ice cream.

When I arrived at college, I asked for all the majors. Instead I left with a communications degree and a smaller business card. I bit off the jobs I could never do. Dreams taste like failure and crayon. I left the picture of myself in space, smiling, because I could not bear to eat it. When people ask, I tell them it is my family’s crest. In order to make this seem realistic, I have the drawing monogrammed onto all of my shirts. It takes up most of the space over my heart. Sometimes a monogrammer will ask if I’d like the picture to not look so jagged and childish, but I tell them to stop insulting my people.

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