Some days one or both of my children will wake up and complain about having to go to school. And it breaks my heart just a little bit because they have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how sweet their lives are right now.
And I don’t want to scare them, I really don’t but maybe i’m doing them a disservice by not being honest about how shite being a grown-up can really be. Maybe one of these days i’m going to have to hit them up with some hard truths about life. Maybe one of these days our conversation needs to go a little bit like this…
Small child: I don’t want to go to school, it’s not fun – you just do boring stuff!
Me: Say what?! You get to play with dinosaurs, sing songs and paint sunshines all day… what’s not to love?! You see I’m not quite sure you realise what you are saying here kid because your life right now is about as good as it’s ever going to get! Do you know what happens after school?
Small child: You get to do whatever you like!
Me: WRONG! You get to get a job. There will be bills, responsibility, performance reviews, tax returns, the constant threat of redundancy and people cloning your credit card to buy themselves expensive TVs and holidays with YOUR money!
…so do you want to go to school or do you want to spend an afternoon convincing Natwest that you didn’t buy 7 Xbox Ones?! Huh?
Small child: Ummm…
Me: OK moving on… After a barrage of awful Tinder dates and getting dumped by someone you thought cared about you by WhatsApp your self-esteem will probably be in tatters by your mid-twenties. But one day you might be lucky enough to meet the love of your life and things will be pretty sweet for a while – you can spend your dual income on city breaks and going out for brunch! Yay :)
…and then you will go and stamp up and down on it all by getting married and having kids because that’s what normal people do right? The circle of life and all that? That’s what Elton John said in the Lion King!
FUCKING ELTON JOHN.