WHEN I GROW UP....
I want to be a surgeon or a barrister or an architect. Failing that, I’ll settle for being a journalist or at the very least the Queen of England or somewhere on the continent. So what if I’m black? When I grow up, I’m going to marry a prince.
And during my reign
1. My word will be law. Although I’m learning that I can only be a law unto myself.
2. Only licensed adults will have permission to become parents. And that license will be issued after rigorous physical, mental and emotional testing so that our country doesn’t produce mothers who are more concerned with the next French manicure than they are with what their child’s going to eat for dinner. Or who’re so concerned about not having a man around the house that they fail to see their child is also motherless. Or who, not using the common sense God gave them, leave their children home alone. Or fathers who don’t understand that fathering means more than breeding.
3. Marriage vows will be renewable annually. Because I think this will cut down on the trauma—to adults and children—associated with divorce. I know the divorce solicitors won’t be too happy since they won’t be able to pick the meat off the bones of the decaying marriage, but maybe they can recover some of their losses by drawing up the licensing agreements.
4. Only people with an IQ of at least 200 will be issued a driver’s license. How could a woman hit-and-run a child—like I read in the news the other day—and then, when caught, thanks to keen-eyed, kind-hearted witnesses, claim she thought she’d hit a cat? Unless she’s of lesser intelligence? I think stupid people are like mice. Where you find one, you’ll find 30.
5. Alcohol, coffee and cigarettes will be on the list of illegal substances. Salt and sugar will become rationed items. Because they’re proven to be terrible to health, yet you can buy them in any shop at any time of day or night.
6. There will be no such thing as money; we will trade in goodwill. And we will measure our worth in our words so that if I need to go to the dentist, I’ll pay for my treatment with a poem.
7. We will worship at the altar of One Love. Because. Bob Marley is right, and I refuse to state the obvious.
8. The Golden Rule will rule. Because this is the only true rule in the Bible. And if everybody treated everyone else how they’d like to be treated, there’d be no such thing as conflict resolution and no need for all those boring experts who visit our school (and no doubt make a bundle of money while they’re at it) teaching us how to get along with each other.
9. Liars will be beheaded, thieves will be blinded, while murderers and rapists, along with other various abusers, will be behanded. Because, like my Mum always says, “You can protect yourself from a murderer and a thief, but you can’t protect yourself from a liar."
10. Politics will be illegal. Because in any other circumstances what politicians do would be described as fraud.
And one for good luck (also known as 11).... Men will learn to sit with their legs closed and not press their thighs against young girls on public transport. Because I’ll remember how much I hated this and I’ll want to save some other teenaged girl from preferring to walk ten miles to and from school rather than endure these men with their gaping, space-invading thighs.
