Mandy snorted, "Yeah, well," she took a sip of her drink, "Think we were both pretty stupid. High IQ doesn't prevent you from making an ass of yourself, unfortunately," she shook her head, grinning. "Oh, believe me, this has been...educating. More than a few of us could do with branching away from wormholes and alien anthropology to talking about other things. Like the history of moonshine," she chuckled, tipping her head a bit as she thought about his question.
She licked her lower lip thoughtfully, pondering--it was always hard to think about life 'before', except in terms of things lost like being able to walk and hold a fork. Sometimes it felt like everything she'd wanted or dreamnt before then had been wiped away, replaced with the singular wish for a body that hadn't been irreperably mangled.
"I remember seeing um...Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time, when I was like...must've been six, something like that, and deciding being an arceholgist would be the coolest thing ever," she grinned. "Poor mom, sure she would've much rather I'd wanted to be a--vet or something, would've involved a lot less using my dad's belt as a whip. Can't remember ever wanting to be anything where I'd be stuck in the same building forever, like a doctor or something. Always wanted to just...explore," she shrugged.
"What about you? Was law enforcement something you always saw yourself getting into, or did life just find you there?"