The special thing was how the police chief described those people. Translated from the Dutch he approximately said this : The son from the year 1984 was seriously wounded and is still fighting for his life in hospital. The father from the year 1962 was less seriously wounded ...
Sounds strange to you ? Well, it is not my translation that makes it sound weird, it was a very weird sentence to start of with.
Unless of course you often read the popular press / gossip magazines. Did you ever notice that whenever a person is mentioned by name, the age of the person is added behind the name ? Like ... Tom (37) really thought that was weird. And we all know what the (37) means. None of us go looking for footnote number 37 (which would be a logical reaction), no, we just know that the Tom mentioned has to be 37 years old. And because of that the story becomes a human interest story, the fact that Tom has an age, makes him more real to us, casual readers.
Still, it would be silly to write : Tom (from the year 1972). So I presume two things :
- The police chief was already making the translation of what happened for the popular press. For really, what does the age of the victims matter ?
- The police chief had the identity-cards of the victims available, but was not able to do a quick calculation (which most of us would do without even thinking) to come up with the ages.
