Do you remember the game RFP-MASH? It consisted of a rectangle with three lines drawn to the left (with the names of three love interests on them), three lines drawn to the right (with the names of three dream cars), RFP – MASH written across the top (standing for rich, famous, poor – mansion, apartment, shack, house) and numbers written across the bottom (starting with 1 and ending with the highest number you achieved when you drew a swirl).

If you did play this game, you’re probably already smiling at the rush of memories this post has provoked. If you didn’t, you missed out on some serious adolescent wishful thinking.

Playing determined by process of elimination such things as your socioeconomic status (though we wouldn’t have dared use such a bourgeois term at the time), and how many kids you would have.

The goal was to create the perfect future. You let “fate” decide which of your dream guys (or girls) would be waiting for you at the altar, and which ultra-expensive car would carry you off to your honeymoon (though fate was subject to a redo if you ended up poor or living in a shack).

Ah, the bliss of naiveté.

For soon enough we learn that every picket fence at some point needs new paint. In other words: life’s not perfect.

And if we’re wise, we quickly stop chasing the fairy tale and get down to the risky business of living. We may even find that the real deal, with all its promised imperfections, makes the version we rigged look as dull as Stepford, CT.

With that in mind, what fancy goals did you have growing up? And how did they play into the life you now live? If you played RFP-MASH, I’d love to hear if you ended up with anything on the list from the many times you played! I didn’t…and boy am I happy about that; though I wouldn’t turn my nose up at that Lamborghini if it ever fell into my lap ;-)!