Allô, allô!

Summer of 2008. Nice, France. Walked into my all-time-favorite store in the whole-wide-world, Marina Rinaldi (Max Mara for fatties). And - BOOM! Every year, the shop assistants close the doors of the shop when I get there - so I can have the place all to myself. They quite obviously work on commission. Those cynical bastards.

Wednesday. Time for my weekly French class. I was told that I could expect to meet quite a lot of typical high maintenance "kept" women in this place, as they tend to do these classes to keep their minds occupied with something other than shopping and their ugly little dogs. This was not true. At all. I am actually a bit disappointed, as I seem to be the only one of those, and I don´t have a dog. Not even an ugly one.

The group consists of:

• A really charming gourmet chef from Trinidad
• A business woman that recently bought an estate in Puligny-Montrachet (why do I not have friends like that?)
• An altruistic kindergarten teacher on a mission to save the world by dating a (Francophone) African
• A lawyer with a French boyfriend
• Her much more intelligent friend (also a lawyer)
• A spoiled (male) brat with rich parents
• Another spoiled (female) brat with rich parents
• Me

The two young ones are quite interesting. The guy just wants to learn French and then move to France and do nothing. As long as his dad pays, I guess that is ok. The girl, however, is very ambitious. She is nineteen years old, and is going to learn basic French before she moves to Paris in January. For a three-month course in FASHION MANAGEMENT. I am not sure where she thinks that will get her, but I get the impression that she believes that she will be discovered by Chanel or some other major fashion house before the end of those three months.

Don´t get me wrong, I do appreciate ambitious people. Really, I do. But what I miss sometimes is a link between ambitions and actual skills and experience. It seems that some young people have been told their whole lives that they are sooo special, and that the sun shines out of their asses. Could we have a little reality check here, please? Your parents are supposed to think you are special - after all - they are your parents! To the rest of us you are just another spoiled brat. Hard work is what gets you anywhere in this world. Please, grow up.

Shit, now I feel really ancient.