At the same time, I had my first serious encounter with death. My favorite uncle, my mother’s brother, the man who had taught me music, taught me to drive, teased me about girls, thrown me a football—that one adult whom I targeted as a child and said, “That’s who I want to be when I grow up”—died of pancreatic cancer at the age of forty- four.

请问文中的target怎么理解？