A young girl was stabbed by another young girl the other day, on a London estate. Interviewed on the TV, her distraught mother said, ‘She was a very beautiful, very ambitious, young girl, who one day wanted to become an accountant.’
I’m afraid I couldn’t resist laughing: the juxtaposition of ‘very ambitious’ with ‘an accountant’ was so incongruous. I was expecting her to say her daughter wanted to be a brain surgeon, someone who would make a difference to other people’s life, you know, like Miss World candidates, who answer, ‘World peace!’, when asked what they wish to achieve. But an accountant?!
Apparently, it’s more difficult nowadays for people from a deprived background to go up in the world than it was 20 years ago and I suppose one should be grateful she didn’t want to become a Page-Three model and be famous for the size of her boobs, or take part in Big Brother and earn pots of money selling salacious stories to the press, still...
Who shall I slap? Parents and educators who do not manage to stimulate children and make them want ‘more’ from life? The media who makes us all believe that being a celebrity is the utmost achievement? Who else?
Saturday 23 June 2007
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Hmm. I think the fact that she wanted to be an accountant rather than 'famous' is absolutely admirable given her background.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, GSE. It still sounded funny, considering the scorn (probably undeserved) with which accountants (or bank clerks or estate agents) are viewed by most people. I'm not slapping her, poor thing.
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