It was one of those post-office evenings where I had just enough energy left to pretend to be a responsible adult. Dinner was barely done, my laptop had just stopped screaming for attention, and there I was – sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, with Renee and her preschool workbook.

Thursday nights in our house are sacred. That’s when Renee and I have our weekly Show-and-Tell prep. (Well, technically her Show-and-Tell prep. I’m just the unpaid assistant.)

As she scribbled furiously with a pink crayon — coloring what I think was supposed to be a cat but looked suspiciously like a jellyfish — I remembered to check the school email.

Subject: Show and Tell – Friday Topic
What do you want to be when you grow up?

Classic. I smiled.

So I turned to Renee and casually asked, “Hey, sweetheart, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

She didn’t even pause. “A chef.”

I blinked. “Really? A chef? Do you know what a chef does?”

She looked at me like I had asked the world’s most obvious question. “They cook, mama.”

Fair. I was impressed. She did know.

But then, she stopped scribbling. Looked up. Tilted her head.

And with the kind of dramatic pause only a 3-year-old can master, she added:

“I want to be a chef… a McDonald chef.”

I just about fell over laughing.

Of all the culinary paths she could take, this tiny human picked the golden arches.

“Why McDonald’s?” I asked, half-laughing.

She shrugged. “Because they have French fries. And I can make them anytime I want.”

Mic. Drop.

The next day at lunch, I was still thinking about her answer — so much so that I brought it up at work.

“You guys,” I said to my teammates, “my daughter said she wants to be a McDonald chef. Isn’t that wild?”

That opened the floodgates.

One colleague chuckled, “When I was five, I wanted to be a truck driver. Not for the trucks — for the horn. Just honk honk all day.”

Another chimed in, “I wanted to be a mailman. I thought delivering letters sounded magical.”

A third said, “I wanted to be a firefighter, because I liked sliding down poles. Never made it past monkey bars though.”

Then someone muttered, “I wanted to be a teacher, because my teacher had the power to make everyone sit down and listen. I was clearly chasing authority.”

We all laughed for a solid five minutes.

And then we looked at each other and realized — not one of us had said ‘software development engineer.’
Not. A. Single. One.

Yet, here we all were: buried in creating 2030 roadmaps, sipping reheated coffee, and debugging someone else’s forgotten code from 2016.

Reflection: The Dreams We Forgot, and the Joy of Remembering Them

Renee’s answer started as a giggle-worthy moment, but the more I sat with it, the more it stuck with me.

When you ask a child what they want to be, their answers are driven by joy. Curiosity. Desire. They don’t say “product manager” because it pays well or “ml engineer” because it’s trending. They say “chef” because they love food. “Firefighter” because fire trucks are cool. “Mailman” because they love the idea of handing someone a surprise.

They dream without baggage. Without societal expectation. Without LinkedIn.

And somewhere along the way, we grow up. We start choosing careers that “make sense.” We pick paths that sound good on a resume, look good on a college app, or make our parents nod approvingly.

Don’t get me wrong — I love my job most days. But I wonder, how many of us made space to ask, “Does this make me feel alive?” the way a box of Happy Meal fries does for a 3-year-old?

Maybe the lesson here is not that we should all quit and become mailmen or McDonald chefs (though, imagine the joy of employee fries). The lesson is that we should stay in touch with what sparked joy in our younger selves.

Maybe we can’t go back and become what we dreamed of — but we can live with that spirit. We can cook more, honk a horn with glee, write a handwritten letter, help someone, or just let ourselves be silly.

And most importantly, we can nurture that fire in our children. Let them dream freely. Let them chase joy. Even if that joy smells suspiciously like French fries.

Because honestly?

I’ve never met a happier chef than the one drawing cats-that-look-like-jellyfish at my coffee table.