None of This is a Joke

Fun fact about me:  I tend to over-react.  Like, to a lot of things.  Sometimes people think it is funny. For example, my husband finds it hilarious when I gasp and make horrified faces at things that most people would laugh at.  Or have no reaction to at all.  (What?  You don't find it reprehensible that a mother would save her daughter's stained white mini skirt instead of CUTTING IT INTO A BILLION PIECES, like *I* would?)

ANYway, I just heard a story that reminded me of one of my classic childhood freakouts.  Last week, a 23-year-old woman who was stolen from a hospital at 12 days old was reunited with her birth parents!  Crazy, right?  Great for the woman and her family, but it definitely brings back scary memories for me.  

I read a lot as a child, and I read a lot of things that, in hindsight, I think were poor choices on my part.  Like that book where the girl's older sister gets a nose bleed one night and that was the clue they all missed and it turned out she had BRAIN CANCER and died shortly thereafter.  I wish I remembered the name of that book.  Not so I could re-read it.  (Okay, maybe so I could re-read it).  When Jeremy got a nose bleed out of the blue last year, I started sobbing.  And told him about the book. And made him think he could have brain cancer.  Whoops.

One of those "Poor Choice" books was The Face on the Milk Carton.  O. M. G.  This story is about a girl (who was the same age I was when I read it, natch) who sees a picture of a missing girl on a milk carton ... and it is HER!!!  Sleuthing ensues, and she learns SHE WAS KIDNAPPED AS A BABY and those people who she thought were her parents and she loved were KIDNAPPERS.

Readers beware!  Causes paranoia in mentally unbalanced people!
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You have no idea how much this book freaked my shit.  I had never considered this idea.  I mean, your parents are your parents, right?  According to this book, there is no guarantee.  I realized that I could not just ignore this, and I MUST LEARN THE TRUTH.

I was so scared at this point that I remember HIDING the book from my parents.  Just in case they actually were kidnappers, I didn't want them to know that I had become aware of the possibility that I could also have been snatched as a baby.

What followed was a few weeks of being afraid to meet my parents' eyeline, furious investigation of my birth certificate (compared to my little brother's official seal, my seal looked slightly different -- evidence of forgery???), deep thoughts about my youngest baby pictures (couldn't these photos been TAMPERED with like those famous fake photos of that girl with fairies?  If they could pull that off in 1917, surely my kidnappers were clever enough to superimpose me into a few pictures.), and very detailed scenarios constantly running through my head.

I don't have quite as vivid memories of how I eventually settled into the realization that my parents were my actual parents, but I do have a vague memory of reading the sequel to the book and when the girl was reunited with her birth mom I think I remember it was a big disappointment and she wanted her kidnapper parents back.  I guess I figured getting new parents could always be worse, so I should stick with the ones I had, no matter how I came by them.

However, I still believed that I had a twin sister my parents were hiding from me.  No joke.  Her name was Crystal and I had dreams about her all the time.  My parents might not be kidnappers, but they and I both know they have been lying all these years about Crystal.  2011 is the year of honesty, MOM.  Just admit it.  I won't be mad.