A chatty little boy who lives near me says he wants to be a race car driver when he grows up.

“Or, maybe an airplane pilot or the guy that drives the firetruck. I want to go fast,” he says.

His mother laughs and says if you ask him again next time he’ll have a different answer.

His 10-year-old sister, on the other hand, never changes her answer. She wants to be a teacher like her favorite teacher.

I think it’s remarkable grade school kids have any answer other than “I don’t know.”

When I was a kid no one ever asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. My only thoughts about the future didn’t extend beyond playing hide and seek that night.

Maybe that’s why I was taken by surprise in fifth grade when Miss Boden, our formidable English teacher, asked each student to stand up and say what they wanted to be when they grew up.

I said the first thing that came to my mind. I said I wanted to be a tap dancer.

That answer didn’t sit well with Miss Boden. She said I had to stay after school until I gave her a more serious answer.

The only other student who had to stay after school because he gave “an unsuitable answer” was Earl Boyer. He said he wanted to be an undertaker. She thought he was being a smart aleck.

Pressed to give Miss Boden a better answer, I said I wanted to be a girl reporter like Lois Lane. Earl wouldn’t change his mind. He kept saying he wanted to be an undertaker.

While Miss Boden thought our answers weren’t suitable, the funny thing is that when we grew up and started our careers, Earl was hired to work for our local funeral home and eventually went to school and became a licensed funeral director.

I couldn’t be Lois Lane but I came close. At 16, I was first hired to write a newspaper column for our local daily newspaper. After graduation I became the first female in our county to be hired as a newspaper reporter.

Looking at today’s newsrooms where half or more of the reporters are women, it’s hard to believe there was a time when women were only hired as so-called “society reporters,” writing about weddings and social happenings. There are few limits on women today.

On occasion Earl and I would laugh about our fifth-grade memory of not having suitable career goals.

We both knew we were really lucky to be able to work at something we loved doing.

By the way, there was one other time when Miss Boden made me stay after school after I turned in my writing essay. She told me I had to sit there until I admitted my mother wrote it. She said no kid could write like that. To prove I was lying, she made me write another essay as she watched.

While that was a little upsetting, Miss Boden was the first person to say I had writing talent. After graduation I sent her flowers to thank her for her encouragement.

Some of us fall into jobs without giving it much thought, happy to have a paycheck. While some forward-looking students give serious thought to planning their career path, the big question each one must first answer is: What kind of work do I want to do. Most kids today think beyond paychecks. They say they want to work at something they enjoy.

It’s a lot of pressure for a high school student to decide what that might be.

When my two daughters were in high school making career decisions, they were fortunate to have their skills and passion align at an early age.

Maria decided she wanted to be a writer because she said it was something that came easily to her. She didn’t like newspaper writing, knowing that magazine writing would better suit her.

Andrea’s piece of extraordinary luck was spending her 16th birthday at a Pennsylvania Press Photographers meeting with her parents. When Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Tom Kelly learned she wanted to be a photojournalist he offered her an internship with him. By the time she graduated from high school she had internships at several papers and knew she was picking the right field for her.

Sometimes it’s luck that leads someone to the right career choice.

One thing is certain: It’s a constantly changing job landscape.

A decade ago few knew two lucrative careers could be that of a blogger or what we call an influencer.

When I first heard that term I thought, what the heck is an influencer and how can you get paid for it?

Social media influencers develop your brand and influence their followers to like what you offer. They can get paid quite well for it.

If anyone had told Miss Boden they wanted to become an influencer or a blogger she probably would have kept them after school forever.

Although I’m well into retirement, I still think about what I want to become, because hopefully, we never stop evolving.

In the long run, what kind of career you pick isn’t as important as what kind of person you are. And that keeps changing over time, hopefully for the better.

Contact Pattie Mihalik at newsgirl@comcast.net.