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M
y apologetic teachers always told my parents:
“Er, he’s probably a late developer.” Years
later, I’m beginning to ask how late is late,
exactly?
I hate people destined for early success. Reader Anita Chau
sent me a report about a pregnant British woman, Amanda
Collins, who entered an ultrasound scan of her fetus into a
baby beauty contest.
Contest officials accepted the entry, although waited until
after birth to give the baby her prize certificate. They could
have rolled it up really tightly, I suppose.
But her actions raise the parenting bar to a worryingly
high level for the rest of us. School admissions officer: “Mr
Vittachi, can you list your child’s achievements before birth?”
Me: “Er, well, she kicked a lot, probably, and practised, er,
breathing, no, wait, there’s no air in there, well, she kicked a
lot, probably.” Like that’s going to get her into a decent school.
Can you actually change your fate by sheer determination?
Maybe. A deaf thief robbed a house recently, taking his sign-
language interpreter with him to facilitate the intimidation of
the householder, says a report forwarded to me from a news
site in Scotland. I found that oddly impressive.
You have to admire that guy for not letting his disability
limit his ambition.
But more common are news reports like the one about the
one-legged teenager in Malaysia some years back who joined
a snatch-and-run gang, and got caught by police on his first
job as he hopped away. Why did his school careers advisor not
warn him? “You have one leg. Is snatch-and-run really the
right direction for you?”
Better late than never
There is hope for late developers, says
father-of-three
Nury Vittachi
.
Yet those experts can be wrong. When my school careers
officer asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said:
“A member of the British royal family.”
She told me that there were limited openings for small
Asian people in that line of work, so I ditched the plan.
You can imagine my fury when in 1995 Princess Diana
fell madly in love with a handsome south Asian guy (Hasnat
Khan) and started dressing in sari blouses to court him.
That could have been me! I could have been married to a
dangerous scheming woman who slept with her bodyguards
and ruined her husband’s life.
Still, I continue to hate the phrase “follow your dream”.
This may have something to do with the fact that my most
common dream is being naked in the supermarket.
A psychologist told me this is an extremely common dream,
which signifies that you feel inadequate as a human being.
I told her, no, it signifies that my local supermarket chain
(Park ’n’ Rob) is run by an organised criminal gang that takes
everything customers (“victims”) have.
So, late bloomers, don’t despair. Novelist Jean Rhys
wrote her first bestseller at 76, and Indian polymath Nirad
Chaudhuri wrote a book at the age of 100.
Meanwhile, there’s another baby beauty contest coming up.
My kids are too old to enter, but I may follow Amanda Collins’
lead and send in an x-ray of my reproductive system.
This may be an arrestable offence, but at least I’ll get some
headlines and finally prove my teachers right.
Nury welcomes your comments and ideas at his Facebook
page:
.
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