When I was five, I wanted to be Daniel Boone for about a day before I realized that my dog had a much better time in the woods and he didn’t have to fight Indians every day. Also, he didn’t ha ve to do what his mother told him to do all the time. He only had to do what I told him to do and I never ever told him to clean his room or take out the garbage. I think I wanted to be a dog for a couple of years. We spent a lot of time together, hiking in the woods, looking for caves in the Sierra foothills near Sacramento. We went on long bike rides, built forts in the cattails, hung out at a trout farm, swam and fished in the American River, camped in the backyard, visited friends’ farms where Sonny would watch and bark while I rode the pigs—and all the while I was following Sonny’s lead, wishing I was a dog like him. I studied him, and we understood each other. We were a wolfpack of two wild things and nobody could put a leash on us. We had each other’s backs.
When my dad asked me one day what I wanted to be, I told him and he totally freaked out and went straight to my mom and there was a long discussion. He wanted to know why I didn’t want to be an Indian or something like he did when he was a boy. I think mom knew what was going on. She never worried about her kids’ mental health. But nobody ever asked me for a long time after that. At about seven, I wanted to be a cowboy, then a sailor, then a jet pilot. I think my dad started to relax.
He used the jet pilot thing to encourage me to do well in mathermatics. The carrot was flying lessons as soon as I was old enough if I got consistent A’s. He was cool. Just a little out of touch. He was a busy young breadwinner with a lot of kids. He blew it a lot, but always made up for it. He got one very important thing right, though. He married my mom.