When I Was A Little Girl…

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Amanda Peet

I wish I could say that I fantasized about growing up to be Billy Jean King or Eleanor Roosevelt or an English teacher like Molly Peacock, the wonderful poet, who taught me in 7th grade. My mom was a social worker, and though I barely understood what that meant, I knew she was helping people for no money. While her life's work is so impressive to me now, at the time she was just my mom who was cranky and brought us take-out chicken on her late days in the Bronx. The truth is that I wanted to be Brooke Shields in The Blue Lagoon. Read more here.

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Dominique Dawes

Even while training in gymnastics, I wanted to someday become an undercover FBI agent. I was always intrigued by criminal law and criminal justice. My mom was a big fan of Nancy Drew, so we had every book from the series around the house. I also remember being intrigued by the Jodie Foster character in The Silence of the Lambs (I watched a lot of scary movies back then, even though I avoid them today), and thinking that could be me someday. Read more here.

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Margaret Cho

I really wanted to be Wonder Woman. I actually made myself a training program. Every day I would jump down the stairs, gradually increasing the number of stairs as I got used to it. I thought if I jumped down enough stairs I would be able to become a superhero. I also did a lot of spinning because I thought if I spun fast enough that I would explode into that costume. Read other responses here.

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Sandra Day O'Connor

I grew up on a cattle ranch in Arizona and New Mexico. It was remote. The nearest town was about 35 miles away. My early companions were my parents and the cowboys. I spent much of my youth on the back of a horse, riding around the ranch.

I loved my life on the Lazy B Ranch and I wanted nothing better than to be a cattle rancher myself when I grew up. Alas! That was not to be. Nevertheless, I had a pretty good life, I must say. Read other responses here.

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Amy Bloom

I am riding on the back of an Arabian stallion. I am wearing a turban secured with a large ruby. (I have practiced walking and sitting with a turban after every bath for weeks now. The towel is about a foot high when wrapped, and the general effect, with my blue towel cape, is one of a certain fierce, regal hauteur. Especially without my glasses.) My bandoliers gleam in the hot afternoon sun. (See Yul Brynner in Taras Bulba.) Read more here.

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Jane Smiley

I used to have a newspaper clipping announcing my parents' marriage. They were tall and handsome, holding hands and smiling. On the other side was the headline, "Russians Have H-Bomb." Thus was my fate decided, or so I thought throughout my childhood, because I was obsessed by nuclear war. Alongside The Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew and The Black Stallion, there was always the nightly news, announcing the latest little step toward mutually assured destruction. Read more here.

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Vivian Gornick

When I was a child I identified with the princess on the pea, that aristocratic ragamuffin constitutionally incapable of mistaking the second rate for the first rate. Later, in college, my literary friends and I were startled, first by George Eliot's Dorothea Brook, and then by Henry James's Isabel Archer-women of high seriousness whose instinct for the first rate fell far short of that of the princess. What this was all about, of course, was finding "the right man," the thing for which Dorothea and Isabel clearly had no talent. Read more here.

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Amanda Palmer

When I grew up, I wanted to be Prince. I loved how shamelessly flaunty-sexy and powerfully talented he was, and how one didn't distract from the other, it all enhanced. And I loved that my mother didn't understand why he wore make-up. He had this THING that the other boy rock stars didn't have, this feminine boy power that drove me absolutely crazy. But I remember specifically wanting to be him more than I wanted to do him, you know? Read other responses here.