What do you want to be?

She asked me this question when i was almost dozing off in the car next to her. I fought with the sleep reflex and opened my eyes and looked at her. Well, she didn't know I was half asleep and I was wearing sunglasses.
My mind screamed out - "Do you think I am 8???"
"I don't know..." I said and i looked out of the window and nothing in particular, I had to show that I was thinking.
"There has to be something that you like except advertising..." she asked changing the gears.
"Yes...sleeping..." I wanted to say.
"Well...maybe...I don't know..."
I didn't have an answer.
When I was 8 I had a lot of answers.
For then you can be anything you want to be. You can be an astronaut, an architect, a forensic expert, a historian and God knows what else.
But now you can just be one thing.
And sometimes not even that.
When you are 8 all you really need to do is to imagine. And everything just happens. It's so simple and you can be a new thing every day. You can even want to be a housewife and say so...and your mother will not raise an eyebrow.
But I am obviously old and lost. I don't even know what I want to be for 5 mins at a stretch. Every day was the end draws near I wonder about what I want to be.
And every day I have no answers.
I didn't have an answer for her. Well surely not one that i could tell her.
"I want to be me...for every day that comes now on I want to be everything i used to be...and for days that I have left behind in some long lost age I want to be EVERYTHING you can't imagine...yes even a rockstar..."
But i told my nosy classmate today-
"I am going to fly a plane..."