Monday, January 24, 2011

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!
{source}

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.

13 comments:

  1. Zomg I TOTALLY freaked out when I read that book too, though my fears of being adopted were sort of distracted by my curiosity about sex and relationships, so I was partly rooting for the main character to stop worrying about her fake parents and focus on fooling around with her Textbook Dreamy Boyfriend.

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  2. Oh, well I grew up in a Catholic house, so I thought God would strike me dead if I had "sexy" thoughts, so I just got nervous when Textbook Dreamy Boyfriend was around.

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  3. VERONICA!!!! Maybe I AM YOUR LONG LOST SISTER! This post, it could have been me as a child! After reading that milk carton book (and the sequel), AND watching the Lifetime movie sometime later, I asked my mom if I was adopted. She promptly burst into tears and asked why I would ask such a foolish question.

    Now, when I was 14, I found out I had a sister I didn't even KNOW ABOUT, so she can't tell me my imagination was that wild. Only the girl isn't my twin.

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  4. Yeah, that is totally why she cried when you asked if you were adopted ... the secret of your sister was eating away at her! :)

    We always knew we were long-lost sisters, anyway!

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  5. I totally forgot about this book! Except I really liked it and the author once came to my town for a book signing so I have an autographed copy of either the 1st or 2nd one. When I was little I was convinced that my parents had surveillance equipment and were always watching me so I had to be perfect all the time.

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  6. 1) Dan and I saw that white mini skirt commercial the other day and Dan immediately said, "don't worry trampy girl, if you father tries to foil your plans to be a tramp them your mother will come to the rescue so you can be as trampy as you want!"
    we love making commentary about commercials.

    2) The name CRYSTAL does NOT fit in to our family names. use your head, Dimick!

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  7. I agree, totally freaked when I read that book, but part of me also secretly wished it would happen to me because I was angsty as a 10 year old and hated my brother.

    Anyway.

    Also, nosebleeds = brain cancer? I've had 3 nosebleeds in two weeks. and used to get them all the time when I was little.

    Maybe my parents aren't telling me something...

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  8. Me -- Oh, I totally loved it too. Which was weird, because I seemed to love all the books that made me cry or gave me ulcers.

    Victoria --
    1) I KNOW! How ridiculous is that commercial? I really don't get it!
    2) And THAT is something they would do to cover up my twin, isn't it? Use your head, Marcetti!

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  9. Lillie -- Yeah, I guess I kinda thought it would be cool if it were true, but the fear of living with kidnappers was a more intense emotion. And ... sorry to hear about your brain ...

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  10. Okay, so my mom and I saw that Tide commerical the other night, and once it was over, just kind of looked at each other with nothing to say. Then I said, "There are, like, four differet things wrong with what just happened."

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  11. Lillie -- Yeah, I guess I kinda thought it would be cool if it were true, but the fear of living with kidnappers was a more intense emotion. And ... sorry to hear about your brain ...

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  12. I agree, totally freaked when I read that book, but part of me also secretly wished it would happen to me because I was angsty as a 10 year old and hated my brother.

    Anyway.

    Also, nosebleeds = brain cancer? I've had 3 nosebleeds in two weeks. and used to get them all the time when I was little.

    Maybe my parents aren't telling me something...

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  13. Zomg I TOTALLY freaked out when I read that book too, though my fears of being adopted were sort of distracted by my curiosity about sex and relationships, so I was partly rooting for the main character to stop worrying about her fake parents and focus on fooling around with her Textbook Dreamy Boyfriend.

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