One blog post does not a person make
posted in Adoption, Reader Input |One of my little pet peeves about the blogosphere is that people can use Teh Google to do a search on a particular phrase, find a particular post on a particular blog, and extrapolate a whole boatload of stuff from that one post. Usually the people who do things like this are people with a bee in their bonnet about some particular Issue. An example: A PETA person performs a search on “animal experimentation”, finds a post on a medico’s blog about an experiment in which the medico makes one comment that could be considered complimentary of one particular experiment that involved animals, and goes nutsoid. Or a super-attachment parent–the kind who proclaims that CIO (crying it out) is child abuse, that baby-wearing is The Only Way To Raise A Child, and co-sleeping is Da Bomb–finds a post on a mommy blog that says that particular mom writing that particular blog in that particular post found CIO to work for her, and posts a comment excoriating that mommy blogger up, down, left, right. Or similar examples. (Please note that these are just pulled out of my ass as examples, with no specific blogs or commenters in mind.)
The other day, I logged into OmegaMom’s admin section, found an unapproved comment was listed, and opened it up to look at it. It was a comment on this post. Note that this post is two years old.
The comment was:
She ‘chose’ you? She had no choice! Any child would chose their natural mother and country! She settled for you! Please acknowledge her feelings later when they are not so easy to manage. ;-(
Well. Boy howdy, am I ever chastened. My outlook on life and adoption has been totally turned around by that one comment. Goodness knows that prior to Dolly’s little contribution to my love fest of two years ago, I was not introspective about adoption. Nosirreebob; I am one of those folk who think that adoption is the be-all and end-all of family building approaches, dontchaknow. I do my very best to squelch any and all mention of my dotter’s birthparents; I refuse to talk about China and her life before we brought her home; I glory in the phrase “Gotcha Day!”; and, of course, I am the kind of person who would gladly go into adoption in a corrupt regime with my eyes closed and my fingers in my ears, singing “La la la, I can’t hear you!” But now that Dolly has so graciously informed me about the ins and outs of adoption issues so succinctly and precisely, I am A Changed Woman.
Ahem.
That was, in case you didn’t realize it, a wee tad of sarcasm.
Just a wee tad.
The context: We (the Omegas) were discussing the day we met OmegaDotter. OmegaDotter was, at the time, four years old. We told her that the people in the CCAA in China had chosen her for us. She said a cute little, sweet little, “I chose you!”, which I thought was sweet, adorable, loving, yadda yadda yadda. I hugged her, kissed her, told her we loved her, and promptly wrote about it in my blog.
(In between various posts like this, and this, and this. And all of these. That last specific one, by the way, was all of nine days after the one Dolly so kindly commented on. Post that sometimes really disturb some of my readers who are not in the adoption world, and make them feel I’m paying too much attention to adoption issues…)
But, hey. I guess what I should have done was to grab my four-year-old by the shoulders, stare into her eyes intently, and tell her that no, she didn’t choose us, that she had no choice, that she “settled” for us, that she needed to face her deep-down feelings right then, right there, and she didn’t really love us anyway, we were just a poor substitute for her real parents and birth culture.
Obviously, Dolly doesn’t have a four-year-old.
So, folks, do me a favor: If you chance upon a blog that says something you really and truly disagree with, read a few other entries in that blog, like a month’s worth, just to see what that blogger might really be about. If, after doing that, you feel like the blogger is still lower than the lint in a worm’s navel, go right ahead and post your comment. Otherwise, regard it as one of those internet exercises in restraint, like the one where after you write a blistering email in the heat of fury, you save it as a draft, go for a long walk, and then return to re-read it before hitting the “send” button. Almost every time I do that, I end up deleting the draft and substituting a pretty toned-down “I disagree” version instead. Or just not sending the email at all.
Because, at the end of it all, while I’m miffed at Dolly’s presumption, I’m also amused. Because I am so not her target. She’s aiming at a fictional version of OmegaMom, and when she fired, it went off about 180 degrees away from her intended mark.
