Day 31: What I don’t want to be

“Brennan, you are just such a good kid. You could grow up to be the prophet someday!”

There’s a story my mom used to tell me, one I don’t remember, and it begins like this — with her saying those words, surely well intentioned, likely not fully considered, to little toddler me.

I have no immediate reaction, but a short while later my mom finds me and I’m crying. “Brennan, what’s wrong?” she asks, and I look up at her very seriously, a little Jonah in the making, “But, Mom, what if I don’t want to be a prophet?”

It seems to me that the key part of this story should be what follows, but the story always stops before then.

But I like to imagine.

My mom snatches me up, laughs and loves me “to pieces,” tells me I don’t ever have to be what I don’t want to be.

(This is Day 31 of a 100-day project. For more about When I Was Mormon, read the introductory post. To access older posts, visit the archive.)