High school highs...1

I always wanted to be working when I grew up. I had made the assumption. Probably a teacher, but none the less a professional. I was probably in class 8. There was this debate in class(We used to have many at the time). The topic was "Should mothers be working?" or something on similar lines. I remember the teacher. Her first name was "Aktar". I have always liked this name. It sounds sweet when said. There were many participants as usual. But none of us wanted to argue saying "mothers should work". The teacher asked me to argue for the topic. I reluctantly agreed. Some of the arguments were so callous, like "If they are so interested in working, why should they even start a family"!!! Deep inside even I felt the same(ok I know, but its true). When you agree so much with your "opponents", to express disagreement convincingly is difficult! I, like most of the class was just thinking "Would I be liking it if my mother started working?".

I was not even liking the idea of me going home after school to an empty house. Then waiting for my mom to come. It was nice as it was. She waiting for me, and asking me how my day at school was - and me giving her every detail I could remember, right from whom all I quarreled with to what interesting thing I leant that day.

I argued saying "If women are talented and educated it will get wasted if they do not work. Even they have dreams and aspirations, so they must be allowed to work". The very tone I adopted made it obvious, I never saw myself in that position years later!! And I had not seen our teachers in this light! Most of them were women and many of them were mothers! All of us had let our teacher down. When she shared her thoughts we realized we had said all these things before a “working mother”! She was saddened by the way we thought - how possessive we were about our mothers and how selfish, how shortsighted.