`WE'LL be getting our Confirmation money in euros," a potential stockbroker announced in the middle of our Christian Doctrine class. While I was expounding on the prolifigacy of The Prodigal Son, she, it seems, was contemplating on how best to invest the guaranteed extra cash flow, which in the natural order of things would be hers in the early stages of the third millennium.
Nothing arrests a child's mind like the mention of money, dosh, lucre, cash, spondulicks, bread - call it what you like. The innocent eight-year-old can with a natural ease fly in the face of the Scriptural quotation: "You cannot serve God and Mammon."
I mention the matter in the staffroom as I know it will elicit a sympathetic response from one of our members, who looks forward to receiving her pension and lump-sum in freshly minted zero zero euros. However, before she could respond, our near-apoplectic priomhoide has jumped into the breach. It seems that he, too, has been discussing the folly of amassing large amounts of wealth with his senior classes.
Alas! His pupils have put forward very aggressively dissenting views. Poor Bill Gates! Well, of course, RICH Bill Gates. It appears that, much to the chagrin of our high-principled principal, our sixth class boys consider Bill Gates a most worthy and splendid role model, to be lauded and applauded for acquiring a bank balance of incomprehensible magnitude.
They loved the idea of £30 billion, even better 48 billion dollars. They practised writing the amount mathematically, being careful not to omit any zero. They commended him for affording employment to so many people. They said that, like the Fooballer Reynaldo, he probably had his own private priest even.
Yes, to them he epitomised the supercool megahero. They thought that our priomhoide's opinion about his lifestyle being moronic and obscene was perfectly gross. Their parents always did the Lotto every Wednesday and Saturday and they'd love to win a million pounds or more.
He went on ad nauseam. We all yawned into our coffee. I was sorry for mentioning the euro. Sometimes tales out of class get poor teacher into trouble.
