‘I wonder what I will be when I grow up,’ mused the
Bombshell from the backseat.
I glanced back at her in the rear view mirror. It was pyjama
day at school and she was in her pink flannel PJs covered in perky little
fairies. Dressed as she was she would make an excellent lazy uni student or
Sarah-Marie wannabe but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
‘You’re lucky because you belong a generation of girls who
can do whatever they want. When your grandmothers were going through school
almost fifty years ago, girls were only allowed to be a teacher, a nurse or a
secretary.’
‘What’s a secretary?’ she wanted to know.
We were driving past the building site of the new children’s
hospital.
‘You could be an engineer and help design new hospitals,’ I
said. ‘Or be a doctor to help the sick people.’
‘Or I could be a nurse like my friend’s Mum,’ she joined in.
‘Yep, or you could grow lovely gardens or be an artist and
paint beautiful pictures…’ I continued.
‘To make the sick people happy?’, she wanted to know.
‘Absolutely,’ I said, happy with the way the conversation
was going. Full points Shannon, I thought. I was covering all the bases,
physical and mental, cerebral and artistic. There are so many ways I could
screw her up, I didn’t want to start now by getting this conversation wrong.
She was nodding thoughtfully.
Suddenly I caught sight of a jet flying overhead.
‘Or you could be an airplane pilot and fly people all over
the world,’ I said.
Sadly she shook her head. ‘That could be difficult,’ she
told me.
‘Why?’ I asked, surprised that she thought there was something
she couldn’t do.
‘Because I don’t know where all the places are.’
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