In the movie “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium,” the eccentric and goofy Mr. Magorium says he needs an accountant to come to his store so everything can be accounted for before Mr. Magorium dies. Then, when the accountant gets there (Mr. Magorium insists upon addressing him as the “counting mutant”) the accountant is stuffy and business-like and doesn’t believe that the toy store is actually magical, which it is. For most of the movie, the counting mutant accounts, like he was hired to, and everyone treats him like he’s a horrible, narrow-sighted, all-rules, no-fun man who needs to be turned into a good person.
Targeting money matters as a no-fun adult thing—which it is, really—is a common concept. The idea of “accounting” is also bad in J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan: the grouchy father is always this horrible banking guy who Wendy, the daughter who’s afraid to grow up, gives the role of the evil pirate, Captain Hook, in her fantasy about Never Never Land.
Is accounting really such an abominable thing? Is the idea really so grown up, so alien from imagination and laughter and goodness that children must hate the idea so much? Should we have accountants in our society at all? Should all accountants go to counseling so they can eventually free themselves from their horrible accountant lives?
Of course not. Accounting isn’t evil. I don’t think it’s even the basic idea of “accounting”—keeping track of how a business spends money—that freaks out kids at all, or the grownups who miss childhood and so write about evil accountants for children’s movies so they can feel like they understand kids better.
The biggest freak-out factor about accounting is that it has to do with rules. That makes sense; kids hate rules, don’t they?
Don’t they?
Actually, no. Kids love rules, weird as that sounds. Think about board games. Board games are all about rules. Think of Monopoly! (Okay, that’s a bad example. Everyone hates Monopoly because it takes forever. People say they like Monopoly, people play it, people say yes I had fun playing Monopoly with you, but inside they’re like THIS IS TAKING FOREVER.) Anyway, kids do enjoy rules because they make them feel safe. They love rules like, “When the phone rings, you say hello and then bring it to Mommy” because this is something they can do easily to show they understand the rule and show they respect their mothers. On a painfully ideal day, of course.
Kids like rules like “no hitting,” because then they know that they can’t be hit (hypothetically) and that if they refrain from hitting others, they will be appreciated as a Good Child (hypothetically). Kids like rules like “every Wednesday night, we have a family dinner and everyone helps cook and we all talk about how our days went at the table” because it features equality, attention, and teamwork.
Rules are not placed in children’s lives just to make them miserable. The idea of rules does not exist to make humans miserable.
And to be honest, kids are constantly doing this “accounting” thing every single day! They count their toys, they count their dolls. They count their coins. They count how many pretzels everybody got to check that everything is fair. When they’re trying to be a leader and organizing a group of kids to play a certain game, they check that everybody has a costume, everyone is standing in the right place, and that every single thing is accounted for before they get going.
No, life is not ideal; the “bring Mommy the phone” rule will not always produce praise from Mommy; the “no hitting” rule will probably be broken; the “Wednesday dinner” rule will not always work out. That’s just how it is, and as kids slowly learn to deal with this global temper tantrum we call life, then all those rules—the things Mommy says, glaring at you, when you break them—the reason you can’t play with your X-Box when you still wanted to—the explanation for why we can’t buy more candy today even though Mommy promised—become the scapegoat for every sensation of guilt, indignity, or disappointment that children feel. If there were no rules, everything would be better, right?
Nah, I don’t think it would. There are other things that improve life when times are bad, not always the opposite of rules at all.
Love is a rule. “I love you,” Mommy says. Odds are, she means it, even when she’s yelling those rules at you. “I love you.” That’s the best rule in the world; “I love you and I will always love you.”
What about science rules? Like, gravity? I like that rule a lot. I do not want to go flying into space.
And, we’re back to accounting: “if she has more pretzels than I have, then I deserve more pretzels!” What’s wrong with that rule?
In sum, accounting isn’t bad, and people shouldn’t think it is. More specifically, children and grownups who want to be kids again shouldn’t be scared of accounting because it reminds them of adulthood. They shouldn’t be scared of adulthood at all.
Adulthood and life are scary, yes. But adults aren’t happy kids transformed tragically into counting mutants. Adults are not minions of boredom sent out to make life worse for children. Adults are not children with their imaginations stripped away, leaving them hollow, shadowy creatures who thrive on taxes and pain.
Adults—and children—are people. People who sincerely wish everything was fun all the time. People who wished they didn’t have to worry about getting hurt or making sure there’s enough money for dinner Wednesday night. People who truly enjoy imagining things or thinking about how life could be better. People who have families and friends or want families and friends, and who want to take care of them because they love them and because they want to be loved.
It’s okay to be an adult, because that is, after all, the point of childhood anyway.
I really want to talk to those people who wrote “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.” Not to yell at them or anything. I did enjoy the movie after all. But I do feel they’re sending the wrong message.
One level of this message is essentially: “When you become an adult, you lose your imagination, and only people who believe magic is 100% real and who aren’t accountants are really good people.”
Hidden in this message is: “Math has nothing to do with imagination, but music does, so music is better because it’s more childlike, and if you don’t trust exclusively in the power of imaginative music then you’ve lost some vital piece of your soul and that needs to change.”
I really don’t like that. Math = adulthood = no imagination = bad. Every part of that equation is offensive and wrong. Of course there are children who like math and who are really good at it! With huge imaginations! Who are wonderful people with happy, imaginative lives!
I guess the message I really want to get out is to all the grown ups who have watched this movie and others like it and got kind of uncomfortable about it, and later alone in bed wondered, “How can I get back to that dreamy state of innocence, childhood? Was I really a better person back then? What am I missing in my life? Should I take up piano? Why do we have to grow up, anyway? Should all accountants go to counseling so they can eventually free themselves from their horrible accountant lives?”
Please don’t. Don’t focus on whether you’re a kid or a grown up. Don’t dwell about whether you’re more musical or mathematical.
It doesn’t matter.
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