How My Soul Chose Adoption

“I always had faith that the right baby would find [my family]. I’ve always felt that children choose their parents, and Eloise found me a different way.”

I’ve always felt that people who claim children choose their natural parents are probably harmless woo woo kookypants types who connect it to reincarnation and all that. I’ve also always felt that adoptive parents who claim their children chose them have a special Hell awaiting them, and that it’s worse than the one reserved for those who talk at the theater.

But then I had a Past Life Regression done, and the scales dropped from my eyes. Here’s how I found my parents. You guys are never gonna believe this, but, cue flashback music….

Snurchin: Oof, what was that?
Anubis: I’m sorry, little Hedgehog, but you never did get your head out of that McFlurry cup. I’m afraid you dehydrated to death while ineffectively backing in circles. On the bright side, the McFlurry cup has since been redesigned to be hedgehog safe.
Snurchin: Cold comfort that. I liked being a hedgehog. Now what’ll I be?
Anubis: Well, dying for a few licks of dairy-based snack containing cookie bits generally gets you promoted to House Cat, but that pun got you booted back down to Human Being. It’s right here in the Book.
Snurchin: Shit.
Anubis: You wanna try for Veal Calf?
Snurchin: No, Sir….Why am I talking to You anyway? I was Irish.
Anubis: It’s the PoMo era. Death gods are assigned randomly now. Just find yourself a vessel…and watch your mouth.
Snurchin: Human Being, Human Being. Wow, there are millions of’em. The USA looks pretty hip. Bob Dylan is getting high with the Beatles at the Delmonico….Aw, gimme the South. Being twenty years behind the rest of the country looks great!
Anubis [flips pages]: Wait–apparently you did get out of the cup. Then you lurched onto an Ulster country lane and a car ran over your head.
Snurchin: Is that why everything looks so blurry?
Anubis [checks watch*, shrugs]: Just pick someone, willya? You’re not the only thing just died.
Snurchin: Kay. Hey, how abo-out…that lady? She’s having fun.
Anubis: You don’t want to do that. That woman doesn’t want to give birth now. And she isn’t married, so socie–
Snurchin: Oh, sure she does. She’s babymaking, isn’t she? [tiny hedgehog fist pump] Woo! Wooooo!
Anubis [flips pages]: It also appears the McFlurry in question had fermented. That McFlurry that appeared in [checks watch] August of 1964. Not remotely possible. Anyway, Human Beings engage in intercourse for any number of reasons not connected with repro–
Snurchin: Hi Mommylady! Hahaha, lookit’er go!
Anubis: OK, seriously, you don’t want to do this. You’ll get illegally aborted, or raised by people who resent you, or that other thing.
Snurchin: What other thing?
Anubis: Adopted. Other kids will make fun of you and you’ll grow up feeling you don’t belong anywhere.
Snurchin: I can take it. I got spines!
Anubis: You will not have spines when you’re human. And that woman? You’ll probably never even meet her once you’re born. She’ll be traumatized, maybe for years, [flips pages] and she never did anything to deser–Oh my. That wasn’t very good at all. Three lifetimes ago, and it hasn’t rebounded yet. Who was in charge of that incarnation anyway? [flips page] Uh oh.
Snurchin: I won’t have spines? Maybe I should pick someone else.
Anubis: Never mind. Have at her! [shoves Snurchin Earthward] Too bad. If that had been an M & Ms McFlurry, she’d be a Bodhisattva now.

Obviously any none-too-bright, starved, dehydrated, intoxicated soul that had recently had its skull crushed would choose this. I don’t know what excuse the rest of you bastards have. 😉

GET IT OFF ME!

*Like Universe Man’s, Anubis’ watch has a minute hand, a millennium hand and an eon hand. The minute hand makes him very impatient.

Disclaimer: McFlurries didn’t exist at the time of my conception. I just thought it was nice of them to change the cups.

Disclaimer 2: Hedgehogs digest dairy products rather poorly, and should not eat ice cream.

Adoption Colored Glasses

(Warning: There’s not much funny about this post.)

What do they see–the people who drool over adoption in general and celeb adoptions in particular–when they look at these photos? (Mouseover for the kids’ adoptive names.)

I had a soul once. They said I had to leave it in Ethiopia with everything else.

I see dead eyes, and a little girl whose rich, famous mommy hasn’t been bothered to so much as hire someone who knows what to do with her hair. Her mother named her Yemsrach.

Stop making "jokes" about my eyes and maybe I'll stop bullying.

I see a little boy who’s tired of being photographed. His name is Rath Vibol.

I am neither a cookie nor a Cajun.

I see a boy trying very hard to figure out how the Hell he got here from New Orleans and why his new mommy doesn’t know a Cajun from a Yat. (I don’t know what his original name is.)

I see a boy who might be on the verge of tears. (I don’t know his name either.)

I see no other way to read these facial expressions. And while I did cherry pick them out of a gallery, the gallery was described not as something like “sad imported toy children of the rich and famous” but as a “slideshow of Hollywood kids who have been adopted by A-List celebrities.” These are, in other words, photos that exist to present these kids to the world as ambassadors (willing or not) of the wonder that is adoption.

People look at these photos and they Ooh and Awww and they say “What a lucky little girl. What a lucky little boy.” And I want to stab their fucking eyes out with sharpened fork tines.

Hi There!

Holy crap, I have readers! If you’d like for me to pimp your blog or site on my currently very tiny blogroll, please let me know!

What WAS This Woman Thinking?!

Shhhh…The spiky urchin is about to employ her spike-ic powers….[squints] Wait…wait…Yes, there it is, I hear her!

“Hmm. My orphan’s not so cute anymore. She’s eight, and people only tell me how great am I for rescuing her every third day or so. I didn’t do this to not get praised, People!  And I’m still paying off the loan for those fees which are totally not buying a child and totally don’t encourage trafficking. Hm. Hmmm. What to do?

“I know, I’ll put a photo of us on Etsy and offer it for sale to complete strangers (who obviously have only the most upright reasons to want a photo of a woman and baby clad only in towels)! Who wouldn’t pay 23 bucks for the privilege of basking in my awesomeness, I mean my child’s awesomeness?”

No, Mommy, no!

Really, lady, WTF? Could this be any less appropriate? I see stuff like this and I’m reminded of Frank Zappa telling the “lame” parents of American their kids would kill them in their sleep one day.