For a while, I wanted to be an archeologist.

It wasn’t because of Indiana Jones.

I actually hadn’t heard of Indiana Jones until I participated in a summer shadow study: something my middle school was all about, where we went out into the workforce and followed some adult around at our dream job. My dad found me an archeologist at the history museum–someone he’d worked with at Penn–and I showed up in her dusty office with my dreams all on my sleeve.

She’d forgotten I was to shadow her that day.

My dad reminded her kindly, and then left. I waited, and she stared, and then rolled her eyes and said, “It’s not because you think it’s like Indiana Jones, is it?”

I blinked. “No? Who… who is that?”

“Ha. All the young people think it’s like Indiana Jones.”

I really didn’t know who that was, but I was pretty sure no one as young as me thought that, as I would’ve at least heard the name by then, probably.

I hesitated. I wasn’t yet used to questioning the authority of adults, even when they were incorrect about something I knew the truth of. In this instance, me, and why I was here. “I like it because I like the idea… the idea of uncovering stories, you know? Figuring stuff out real slow. Dusting off the details.”

She pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes, and for a moment she was all squint. Then she nodded, and beckoned for me to follow as she trotted off.

She took me through the museum, giving me the real official tour, thick with dates and odd little details about time more than people. At the end, she asked me if I had a “favorite part.”

I’d shrugged, by now feeling safe. “Ancient Egypt?” I’d said. That room had been by far the most impressive, at any rate.

This immediately re-invited judgment. “Yes, well. Everyone does choose that, don’t they?”

I’d stared. She’d dropped me off there, told me not to move, and left for the next four hours.

I was in middle school. I was made of shame already. This didn’t help.

For all of those four hours, with the ancient world laid out in dim light before me, I agonized over myself and what I could have, should have said. I’d misunderstood, you see. I’d thought she’d meant a favorite part of the tour. Not all of history.

I should’ve said the Mt. Versuvius eruption. Pompei: those who’d escaped, and who’d died.

That would’ve been true, at least. I’d caught a public television documentary recently and become obsessed. Yet this is the first time I remember it: the specific flavor of protective bite around my truth. I could not fully regret not speaking honestly, here. Because she might’ve scoffed at that, too.

Before an enormous golden arch, I feverishly counted my truths like coins. I hid them in my mind, and told myself, in unplain speak, that I needed to protect them.

That meant silence. That meant lies. So what.

I was so tired of getting laughed at.