Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they're looking for ideas.

Poundstone’s joke flips a familiar adult ritual—asking children what they want to be—into a confession of adult uncertainty. The humor comes from reversing the assumed direction of wisdom: instead of adults guiding children toward a future, adults are portrayed as still searching for purpose and borrowing the child’s imaginative freedom. Implicitly, it critiques how adulthood is expected to come with settled identity and ambition, when in reality many people feel stuck, dissatisfied, or open-ended about their lives. The line also satirizes careerism: the question is treated less as encouragement and more as a socially scripted prompt that reveals adults’ anxieties about work and self-definition.