Cinematic Adopto-Crap: Juno

A friend posted something on FB recently about a screenwriter who writes under a moniker too corny for a comic book supervillain, even if the comic book were about cowboys. The one who got work stripping so she could write about stripping and how skeezy all the real strippers are. Yes, I mean the screenwriter who wants to be called something that means Devil TowninWyoming. (I will NOT.)

Brook Busey and her oscar

I could forgive her most of that (not the outright treachery to her sex, though) if she hadn’t written this:

My eggo is preggo. This doodle can't be undid, Homeskillet.

I watched Juno with great trepidation because certain of my a’relatives said the main character reminded them of me. (I still talk to these people, but only when we’re in the same room.)

What I liked: The acting.
What I hated: The cheesycute indie music, the cheesycute indie wobbly-drawn-letters opening credits, the straight up Mary Sue-ness of the main character, the flippant treatment of every serious issue it pretends to engage (teen pregnancy, abortion, adoption) when all this movie really wants to do is show us all how adorable and clever it is; the casual racism, many of the movie’s fans, and every
single
fucking
LINE
of that horrible,
horrible
script.

I hate it from chair to chair. (Oh, look! A Frame! There’s no reason for it to be there at all, but…A Frame! Sooo intelligent, so literary!) I hate it so much there was no need for me to re-view it in order to write this post, because very horrible line, every inappropriate moment, every conflict or hint of trouble Juno dodges just by being Juno is seared into my brain as if by a woodburning set. This movie is such a perfect shitstorm that I truly enjoy hating it. Join me, won’t you?

I’ll skip the music and credits crap and merely observe that so lame and so cute and so trite are they that the a’relatives I mentioned, the only ones I know who found this clever and new, were all in their seventies at the time. I don’t think that’s the audience the creators were going for here.

First, the Mary Sue-ness! The only thing to know about Juno is that she is absolutely perfect. She is the coolest hippest cleverest funniest capable-est teenager ever. Just in case you don’t figure it out, the script has the father of her baby TELL her so: “You’re, like, the coolest person I’ve ever met, and you don’t even have to try, you know?”

The problem is that this guarantees nothing bad will ever happen to her, and therefore she cannot be in a story because stories require conflict. I didn’t see any. None, anywhere, about anything.

Had her wisecracking character had to actually face an actual teen pregnancy with actual repercussions, she might have grown. We might have seen that the wisecracking was a facade, that Juno really cares that her only interaction with her mother is getting a cactus in the mail every year. Nope! None of that shit. She remains perfect throughout, and nothing seems to touch her. Her pregnancy and adoption are a Wacky Adventure that end with the same guy and the same chair and the same song, as if to underscore how little has actually happened in the last 90 minutes or so.

A serious issue: Teen pregnancy! Juno is such a hip, unusual free spirit that that she took it upon herself to get pregnant by initiating sex for the hell of it one day and oops! getting pregnant her very first (and apparently only) time. Yes, this is possible, but that’s not why it’s written that way. It’s written that way so that awesome wonderful Juno is A) in control of the pregnancy from the beginning and B) Not a slut. So not a slut like those Other pregnant teens (or strippers) one encounters in Real Life. They had sex more than once, every one of them, the dirty little whores. Juno is so cool she can get herself pregnant with hardly any help at all and not even “deserve” it. The worst reaction to the pregnancy I remember is a scene where a bunch of other students back away from her in the hall lest she breathe on them and make them Catch Pregnant. Her family thinks it’s just awesomesauce she got knocked up, and so does pretty much everyone else. Hey, teens of today? I don’t know why you make such a big deal out of this. Being up the spout is totes the shit!

Again, a missed opportunity for character development: If Juno expressed a need for boundaries from her permissive family by getting pregnant, and anyone dealt with this in any fucking way at all beside shrug, that is. But character development and conflict are way too conventional for Devil TowninWyoming.

A serious issue: Abortion! Know why you shouldn’t get an abortion? The receptionist in the clinic is a complete freak, and your embryo has fingernails.

In the first place, NO. I looked it up. Fingernails start to form around week twelve, by which time more than nine out of ten of the abortions done in this country have already been performed. More gender treachery from Devil TowninWyoming, who has no reason to lie about such things but does it anyway.

(I’ll pause here to note that some people consider Ms. TowninWyoming a feminist. Think about that as you read.)

In the second place, when real girls and women get pregnant, they really face a hard choice. They really have to make a freaking choice. Juno doesn’t, because the script can’t be bothered. One senses that the author felt some conflict coming and felt that this might make her youthful self-insert main charatcer look bad in some way, and ducked around it at the last second. Juno rejects abortion based on zero information and very little emotion. No decision-making at all. Well that was easy. Everything’s easy when you’re Juno! (What kind of choice was that?!)

Third: The receptionist is a freak partly because she actually has too many piercings and tats to be truly Hip, but mainly because she uses, with her boyfriend, the flavored condoms the place hands out. Oh my god, what a freaky slutty-slut-slut. If you stay in the abortion clinic with someone like that, you will so catch Slut and then the next thing you know you’ll be pregnant again because those flavored condoms are for sluts so you didn’t use them.

(Yes, they do, I swear. Some people really believe this woman is a feminist.)

Serious issue: Adoption! Juno wants a closed adoption–no reasons given, she just wants to “kick it old school” and do like “Moses in the reeds.” Considering adoption? Open versus closed adoption is a question you need devote zero time to, because not having this kid around will not affect you and not having you around will not affect this kid. It’s Movie Adoption Magic! And it would do a lot less damage if the world weren’t full of people who still believe this shit.

Why did Ms. TowninWyoming do this? Why? I don’t get it. The screenplay does not continue for long after the birth. There would never have been any scene in which the open adoption plays out. All I can figure is that Juno rejects open adoption because she is So Very Good and So Very Not A Slut that she is compelled to do what a “Good birthmother” does: Pony up the goods and GTFO. She’s so Good she doesn’t even want to know the baby’s sex! (Again, if there were any indication this were Juno toughening up because she loves the baby and wants to keep it, and that a character developing downfall is coming, I’d go along. Nope. “Close it up!”)

She finds parents for the baby in the Penny Saver and tra la la, goes to meet them. I don’t remember if both sides of the adoption use the same lawyer or anything awful like that. I do remember that the woman, whom I’ll call Mrs. Mommy, is a responsible career woman who apparently lives to harsh her husband’s buzz. She might have been the villain of the piece, but she’s rather sympathetic. All she wants, after all, is to be a mother, and this is a Good womanly ambition. And someone has to be Good enough to raise Juno’s baby.

(That feminism–I’m somehow not feelin’ it.)

Her husband, who shall be known here as Mr. Manchild, doesn’t want to be a father, but never had the balls to bring this up during the process of getting married, being married or putting “looking to adopt” ads in the Penny Saver. There’s an incredibly creepy scene in which Juno drops by and Mrs. Mommy isn’t home and she and Mr. Manchild discover they like the same films and music and–Well, here’s went through my mind:

This is so wrong. He’s gonna try to kiss her to prove he’s not a grown-up or something–that’s just the kind of guy he is. It’s gonna happen. So carefully has this conflict been set up that it has to happen–dude has to make a move on this kid half his age who’s the mother of his child-to-be–and then won’t we have something to really chew on?

But that would be a conflict, and Juno might look bad, so of course nothing happens at all. The scene apparently only exists to provide more more more evidence of how cute and clever Juno is. Haha wow, she is all up in the nostalgia of an older generation. (It’s different and special of her because no young person ever spurned what all the other young people liked in favor older cooler stuff–it’s so off the wall, amirite? Crazy kid!) So Mr. Manchild and Mrs. Mommy divorce, and Juno gives birth and cries. The next thing you know, she’s with the same guy near the same chair playing and singing the song from the opening credits. Adoption is easy! It changes nothing!

In the delivery room, Juno’s stepmom says “Someday you’ll be back here, honey… on your terms” and my head explodes. These WERE her terms. Everything in the movie, from conception to birth, from chair to chair, was done on wonderful Juno’s wonderful terms. Now you throw out this line like you want to make it look like there was coercion or pressure or I dunno, some sort of problem to be solved in this movie? Pfft. Too late.

The casual racism! The only non-white character I remember is Su Chin (?), the girl who convinces Juno her fetus has fingernails. She’s in classes with Juno, so she can obviously write a decent paper, but she’s Chinese. So when she stands outside the abortion clinic? You guys are not gonna believe this–Her slogan? Is “All Babies Want To Get Borned!”

Borned. It’s funny because she’s Chinese.

Fuck you, Devil TowninWyoming. Of course, there’s this:

“You should’ve gone to China, you know, ’cause I hear they give away babies like free iPods. You know, they pretty much just put them in those t-shirt guns and shoot them out at sporting events.”

(She’s a feminist. That’s why she finds jokes about sex-based child abandonment so fucking funny. Know what else is a riot? Infanticide! which some women who give birth to “the wrong sex” surely still practice somewhere. LOL!)

And don’t think that just because there are no black people in Juno’s world that they’ll escape the casual racism. Did you know Morgan Freeman starred in The Bone Collector? Me neither! Fuck it, it was SOME black guy, and being accurate would ruin the lame-ass joke.

The fans! Here’s one now:

Personally I think Juno is brillient [sic]. Personally I think that so often young people who get pregnant think that their only option is abortion, as does Juno. This film doesn;t take away this option, Juno goes for an obortion [for a what now? you spelled that right not twenty words ago!] and changes her mind, it doesn’t make abortion look bad but shows that it isn’t the only option. Brings in the idea of adoption, so many people never consider adoption as an option, I think it’s great that this film shows young people that it can be an option!

Personally I think you’re a moron. Personally I think that you’ve never considered what being pregnant is like or how any of the options might feel, just as Devil TowninWyoming hasn’t. This film doesn’t take away this option, it waves it away. “So many people never consider adoption” because JESUS CHRIST CAN YOU READ YOURSELF TYPE? Would YOU give your baby to strangers if you weren’t desperate? I think that if you really think young pregnant women aren’t presented with the “adoption option,” you’re even stupider than a moron–and Stephanie Bennet, for one, would like a word with you. She had a baby once….

The script!
“Yo yo yiggidy yo.”
“This is one doodle that can’t be un-did, Homeskillet.”
“Honest to blog?”
“Phuket, Thailand!”
(On the PAPs) “They were Mark and Vanessa Loring. And they were beautiful even in black and white.”
(To the PAPs) “If I could just have the thing and give it to you now, I totally would, but I’m guessing it looks probably like a sea-monkey right now and we should let it get a little cuter.”
(No, it’s totally an already-baby WITH FINGERNAILS,remember?)
(Juno to Mrs. Mommy) “It’s a baby. It’s your baby. It kinda looks like it’s waving, you know, like it’s saying, ‘Hey Vanessa, will you be my mom?'”

PUKE.

Finally, a few things that just pissed me off: I can tell it’s autumn. There are leaves blowing about. I see lots of orange. I don’t need a big wobbly animated caption saying AUTUMN.

“Thundercats are” not “go.” Thundercats are on the move. Thundercats are loose. Thunderbirds are go. If you’re going to use multi-generational pop culture references to show how cool you are Juno is, get them right. She could have yelled “Thundercats Ho-o-o-o!” and been at least as funny by me.

After Ms. TowninWyoming was mentioned by my friend, I thought I might do the big fat Juno post, but probably not. It was the comment I quoted from a fan that really made me write this entry. I understand now why people express incredulity that more women “aren’t aware” of the “adoption option.” They really do think it’s as easy as Juno makes it look–two sobs (one before the birth and one after) and it’s right back to your happy quirky teenage life like nothing happened. For all I know, people at agencies still tell pregnant women this; they certainly used to.

So fuck this movie forever for a million reasons, but primarily for contributing to that mindset.

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“Jezebel Boy”

Jerry Sandusky’s lawyers are

–an excellent argument for adding the First Law Of Holes to the law curriculum, and
–victim-blaming assholes.

Know why Sandusky had to shower with boys? Because they were filthy nasty foster kids, and nobody had taught them how to shower by age 14.

“Some of these kids don’t have basic hygiene skills,” Rominger told WHTM-TV on Tuesday. “Teaching a person to shower at the age of 12 or 14 sounds strange to some people, but people who work with troubled youth will tell you there are a lot of juvenile delinquents and people who are dependent who have to be taught basic life skills like how to put soap on their body.”

How. To. Put. Soap. On. Their. Body.

You asshole. If foster children were filthy wild animals, it would still not be appropriate for authority figures to take off all their clothes and hop into the shower with them. One might simply hold up one’s arm, wet it in the sink,and apply soap to it as a demonstration, mightn’t one?

This is bullshit. I understand that some foster kids have been in horrible places, and that maybe hygiene wasn’t stressed in some of their lives. But to say they are too stupid to understand the concept “put soap on body” without having Coach Pedo naked in the shower with them, touching them, is an insult to everyone–but especially to the kids.

Because, mark my words, one of these days someone who’s trying to adopt is going to say or type, “We thought about going through foster care, but you have to teach those kids how to shower and then they accuse you of rape. Nope, it’s Ethiopia for us!”

You made him do it, you dirty, dirty boys. 1-800-REALITY indeed.

“Like It Or Not”

…she’s comin’ for your kids, “Third World.”

Womb raider

Just a placeholder post to letcha know I’m still around. The snurchin is busybusy.

“Eddie, Are You Kidding?”–A Postscript

PS–Hey Russia,

Our son, whom we purchased from you, is dead, and we had to wait IN JAIL to stand trial over it. This is outrageous, and we demand a retrial. Just because our child’s corpse proved upon autopsy to be that of a starving boy who’d been repeatedly beaten until his face and head “looked like a balloon” is no reason to blame us for the suicide of a monster. You sold us a bad product, and we are considering suing you for the pain and suffering we have endured.

They think we killed him! Can you believe that bullshit?! It was totally FAS and he totally did it to himself and you know it.

Really, Russia, you should be ashamed. This seven-year-old boy beat himself and beat himself and starved himself and beat himself–and we were powerless to do a single thing about it. We’re only adult humans, and Nathaniel had superhuman strength. Just read the autopsy report! The self-inflicted head wound he died of took hundred of pounds of pressure to inflict. You told us he was human. We want our money back.

Nathaniel was a bad, bad boy. He managed to hit himself in impossible places. He perversely tore the muscles attaching his limbs to his body by wrenching at his own arms and legs–again, with force human seven-year-olds simply don’t have. He broke one of his own ribs! And all to make us look bad in the eyes of people who don’t understand how hard it is to buy a child and then discover he doesn’t know that means you get to control him.

We want his twin sister right now. She was in the womb with him, but somehow she did not get horribly damaged by their mother’s drinking. Nathaniel knew in the womb we would adopt him, so he took all the FAS for himself so as to embarrass us even more. We can tell because Dasha has managed to grow up just fine outside our household. We specified in our adoption paperwork that we did not want to buy The Evil Twin, and you fucked us over.

Please correct this oversight.

Signed,

Michael and Nanette Craver

Yeah, not so funny. I can’t do this. Rot in Hell, you pricks, and may you get your retrial to have it backfire on you. It’s the only way you might serve a fraction of the time behind bars you deserve.

RIP, Ivan Skorobogatov.

 

“Eat That Question”

Hey bastards–How many adoptees does it take to screw in a light bulb?

“Childish Perversions”

Or, The Creepiest Adoption Analogy In The World:

“It has been said that adoption is more like a marriage than a birth: two (or more) individuals, each with their own unique mix of needs, patterns, and genetic history, coming together with love, hope, and commitment for a joint future. You become a family not because you share the same genes, but because you share love for each other” ~Joan McNamara (Adoptive parent)

Wow, this has it all. The passive voice (by whom has this thing “been said,” Ms. McNamara?), the urge to make the adoption the adoptee’s choice, at least in part–not to mention the very special disregard of how fucked up it is to talk about marrying a child.

I was two months old, you silly woman. I did not beam up at my new mommy’s face and croon “I do!” I did not commit to anything. I probably did not hope for anything except my next meal or nap. I could not have loved people I had just met. I did NOT GET MARRIED at two months old, and the legal ceremony by which I was transferred to my new family was nothing like a marriage.

Things I did the day I got married that I did not do when I got adopted include:

Get out of bed, shower, brush my teeth, and dress myself
Walk
Eat solid food
Drive a car to the courthouse
Talk to a judge who was absolutely sure I was performing this ceremony because I wanted to
Say words of assent to said ceremony
Comprehend, read, and sign a legal contract binding the ceremony
Have sex
Put myself to bed

Adoptees can’t choose adoption. The older ones can give their consent, but what meaning does that have? If we give consent the same meaning across the board that we give it in rape cases, no child can meaningfully consent to being adopted; the power imbalance is too great. I’m all for allowing older kids to “choose” to be adopted by their foster families, but let’s not kid ourselves that even they can choose this in the same way an adult can choose marriage.

If adoption were a marriage, we’d apply common sense to it. We’d say things like “But you just met!” and “How can you expect her to give up everything just because you’ve wanted a wife for so long?” And when the deluded partners-to-be said things like “I knew I’d love him forever the moment I saw his photograph” and “This is the woman god meant for me to have,” we’d tell them they were creepy and wonder what the other party was thinking.

But it’s OK to do these things to babies and children because they’re babies and children. See the difference? See how it works? You can’t have it both ways, Ms. McNamara. Because damn is that fucked-up.

“Here Lies Love”

What’s worse than finding out at age twenty-three that you’re adopted?

How about finding out you aren’t?

“‘Who’s my mother? Who’s my father?’ [S]he [Loretta Young] would answer it very easily by saying, ‘I couldn’t love you any more than if you were my own child,’ which, of course, didn’t answer the question, but it said, ‘Don’t ask the question.’ ”

Judy, daughter of Loretta Young and Clark Gable, was never adopted. She was raised by a first mother pretending to be an adoptive mother and a stepfather who never adopted her (although she took his name). But she thought she was adopted, and she might as well have been: she got the same secrets, lies, and non-answers so many of us did.

And she got them for the same reasons: Judy’s origins were inconvenient for the people who brought her into the world and those who raised her. The fact that she would grow into a person who needed these answers was of no consequence.

As the person who passed it along to me warned (lemme know if you want credit!), the following film is Hell on irony meters:

(Did she say “sacredly confidential files”? Sheee it.)

“Jesus Thinks You’re A Jerk”

Very few things vex the spiky urchin more than the many people she’s met who can read god’s mind. It’s Sunday and I’m thinking of a few specific things said by the Adopt For Jesus brigade.

For one thing, Jesus was not adopted. (He had a stepdad.) But if Mary were pregnant today, she’d be visited by three wise social workers/agency “finders” who’d pressure her to give him up to a decent family, one that could buy him an actual crib at least. Or she’d lose him to CPS for giving birth in a stable.

Moses, OTOH, was adopted. We don’t celebrate that so much, perhaps because he snuck home to his first mother and rebelled against his a’dad.

No, we are not “all adopted by god.” Stop stop stop stop saying that. You don’t know what adoption is or how it feels unless you’re actually adopted. When you say everyone is, you erase me and my history yet again.

And no, God, if there is a god, and if that god is truly all-good, does not want you to adopt. He wants you to help widows and orphans, not snatch orphans from widows. If he’s the Christian god, he has said he wants for you to sell everything you have and give the money to the poor. This advice was important enough that it appears in all three synoptic gospels. Camel, needle, soforth.

No, God did not “call” you to adopt, “lay it on your heart” (?) to adopt, or convince you to adopt by “moving in your heart.” (There’s that heartworm from yesterday’s comments. Eww!) If you disrupt, he did not “use you” to get your child to the family you manage to dump him or her on. Take some responsibility for your own damned decisions, willya?

No, adoption is not faith in action. It’s not a mission. And this?

http://www.spiritualadoption.org/

IS NOT ADOPTION, you righteous asses.

I haven’t read the whole thing, but I’ve never found a single verse in the Bible stating that orphans or the fatherless are to be taken from their families. I did find this:

Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any wise, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry; And my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.–Exodus 22: 22-24

and this

And the Levite, (because he hath no part nor inheritance with thee,) and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest.–Deut. 14:29

And this:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.–Matthew 1:14-15

Finally, no, adoption is not the process by which we convince Jesus to lop off the feet of innocent babies. Kidding!–nobody claims this–but WTF is up with these images? Seriously, where’s the rest of that baby?

No you weren’t.

No she didn’t.

Where Babies Come From

Not flesh of my flesh
Nor bone of my bone,
But still miraculously
My own.
Never forget
For a single minute:
You didn’t grow under my heart
But in it.–Fleur Conkling Heyliger

sigh

Why does the spiky urchin headcarpet?

(Don’t worry, I’ve prepared a longer answer than the obvious “Because she loves that damn’ gif!”)

The “born in my heart” metaphor/poem has always bothered me. It denies the existence of the first mother. And, like so much of the stuff adopted children are expected to believe and take comfort in, it’s doublespeak: it denies adoption happens in the name of celebrating it. It shuts down conversation about adoption while pretending to explain it.

And it bothers me because for crying out loud, how is an adoptee supposed to forget for a minute that s/he’s adopted? What happens if s/he forgets? And what’s so miraculous about it from the adoptee point of view? And why, why, WHY is it called “The Answer”? It answers nothing. To test this theory, I thought back to my own childhood. Here are some of the questions I asked, paired with The Answer:

Why are my eyes hazel? –In my heart.
Why did she give me away? –In my heart.
Do I have any brothers or sisters? –In my heart.
Who was my mother? Who was my father? –In my heart.
Why do the other kids make fun of me for being adopted? –In my heart.

And little adoptees already get extra-confused about reproduction. I thought infertility meant my a’rents must not have sex, and my a’bro thought being adopted meant he couldn’t father his own kids and would have to adopt in turn. So I can imagine a youngun hearing this poem and imagining something like this:

There’s a plush chestburster out now. I want one, and I want one of those awful I Was Born In Mommy’s Heart creepers for it so I can dress up as an a’mom next Halloween.

Leftover Turkey

from National Adoption Month, or,

Equal Opportunity AP Glurge-Bashing Theater!

Here’s more AP self-satisfied sentiment, from a dad this time. Sir, once the kids are in your possession, there’s really no need to write more “Dear Birthmother” letters, let alone post such nauseating bullshit-glurge blended smoothies for your friends to ooze over and wallow in. I don’t think your kids w–Oh, all right, if you must.

Dear Birth Mother, I think about you everyday [sic]. Every time that I look at these children, you are in my thoughts. Never, for one moment, did I not want you in my head like you are. I think about what you gave to us. Two of you had a plan. One of you had no choice.

Considering how many times a day the average parent looks at his/er child, forgive me if I don’t believe you think of her (at least three “hers,” apparently) sacrifice and pause to shed one perfect crystalline tear every single fucking time. And if you do? Well, that’s nice, but it helps no one and changes nothing. Wanna cookie?

Still, you do receive the photos that I send to you. And I keep safe, the letters and the photos that you send to us.

Are you saying you don’t give them to the children? I hope that’s not what you’re saying. It reads like that’s what you’re saying.

One day we’ll meet and we’ll be best friends. Take my word for it.

“Pinky swear: BFFs. I just know it! That’s why I’m in no hurry to meet you at all! And even though I know damned well from these letters and photos you’re real people, I feel more secure with the imaginary birthmothers who live in my head and happily made children just for me. That’s how I really know we’ll be besties. Even though there are at least three of you: we’ll allllll be best. I’ll be bestest though, of course.”

It’s so sad and beautiful. I haven’t felt this ill since I saw a certain couple on Adoption Stories. The first mother of their new baby died about the time the adoption finalized and it was so beautiful and sad and convenient, and they were so going to raise their little one to honor her memory so so so much.

These children are everything to us. […] They take everything from me. Or perhaps I give too much of myself. Either way, I’m dog-tired. But when they are not here, I am lost. What will I do when they are grown and gone? Since I live and breathe them, I fear that I will become nothing and might simply float away.

Seriously? “I am the best daddy ever. Oh god, sometimes I think about what a wonderful dad I am and how much I give, and I hug and hug and hug myself. Then I pat my own back while my hands are back there. Why not?”

Hey, Superman, you know what women call giving everything and living entirely for your children? MOTHERHOOD. Those are the MINIMUM requirements our society expects of a mother, and gods help her if she fails, because then she might have to “make an adoption plan”–or not, because it’s not like her plans really matter. (See “one of you had no choice” above.)

I had no idea how to parent when I began this journey in 2000. But quickly, I learned the ropes. Now I’m an old pro.

I practiced on your child so I could get it right next time. Isn’t it beautiful?

For you that planned this life out for your children,

Nobody plans this. Well, maybe surrogate mothers, or sperm and egg donors. They get reimbursed, though, don’t they? Also, the word we use for people in this context is WHO, not THAT. “That” is for things. And that little mistake was not telling at all, at all.

I pray that you are still pleased with that decision.

“So I can sleep at night, which I do anyway, knowing any woman would want me to raise her kids. I mean really–we’re talkin me here!”

Pleased? PLEASED?

No, really: PLEASED??!?! FUCK YOU.

And for you who struggled to hold onto your children,

“Tough luck!”

please know that they are safe and loved. And when that day comes when you finally see them again,

“You know, after they’re oh, say, 18…no, make that 21.”

I promise you that you will be quite pleased with how your babies turned out.

You really believe this, don’t you? You have these little tiny pretty shiny smiling fairy birthmother creatures in your head, and they go around giving out babies because it makes them so pleased. And they’re never seen again until Daddy is ready and Daddy wants some praise. Seriously, this is nauseating.

Even though you didn’t raise them, you gave them a beautiful life. And that’s what good Mothers are suppose to do.

“And every night I take this fake sadness out of my pocket and unfold it and smooth it and put it under my pillow. And I have such beautiful dreams.”

Sir, I believe you love your children and are grateful for them. Truly: I assume this about all parents unless/until told/shown otherwise. To take that out and wave it around on a stick and dip it is glitter and mythology and bullshit merely cheapens it. And that’s not beautiful, only sad.