SEVENTY FOUR REASONS
WHY IT'S SO GREAT TO BE AN ADOPTEE
- We have more names than most people.
- We are good at lying and being lied to.
- Two family trees.
- We get to go on this nifty epic search for our roots.
- We develop great research skills.
- We learn to cut right through the crap.
- We can moonlight as P.I.s
- Cheap health insurance by leaving "family medical problems" blank.
- There's a type of sword named after us.
- Whenever an a-parent does something idiotic, the knowledge that there is no genetic relationship.
- Lust runs in our blood.
- Some of us have 2 Birthdays.
- We can always spend our extra money on a new search.
- If you're real nice Jackie might adopt you.
- We can't get arrested for marrying our 1st cousins
- We can't get arrested for marrying our sister or brother for that matter!!
- We might be in for two inheritances.
- IF we find our birth family we have the chance of having TWO great families!!!
- If we find our birth family we have a chance of having TWO crappy families!!!!
- If we find our birth family we have the chance of having ONE.
- You get to hear *How does that make you feel?* more often than a psychotherapy patient, but you don't have to pay $90 an hour.
- We get to hear chirpy little twits constantly tell us, "You weren't expected you were selected."
- You won't be the first on my a-parent's list to donate a kidney if it's needed.
- You save time at a new doctor's office because I leave the "family health history" blank.
- You can blame everything and anything on the possibility of your space alien parentage.
- You get to say proudly--I wasn't born...I was hatched!
- You can claim that your mold wasn't only cracked or broken, that YOURS was so strange and bizarre that people came and smashed it all and hid the pieces!
- You can eat any strange food you wish, and claim it as ethnic and healthful for your people.
- You can be glad that you did not inherit the mental illness that runs in your adoptive family.
- You truly have every reason to ponder your navel.
- You can be surprised every time you look in the mirror and see a stranger!
- Your adoptive mother could be a serial killer with a perfect alibi as she has a forged document saying where she was on the day you were born. Do you REALLY know where she was that day?
- You get to be surprised when you are pregnant as you wait to see what kind of genetic mutations you may carry!
- You can really connect to your minister telling the congregation that you were born in sin.
- You have the chance to honestly believe you wrecked someone else's life.
- You KNOW infertility isn't a genetic problem in your family.
- You were ahead of your time as the ultimate in recyclables.
- You can take solace in the fact that you were instrumental in helping some attorney make his Mercedes payments.
- You eased the social conscience of a misguided social worker looking for a sense of personal importance by being a pathetic waif she placed.
- You get to have your amom shoot 'The Look' at you whenever you ask about your birthfamily.
- You have your own personal Can Of Worms to open despite all warnings!
- You can live incognito. After all, that's what your life is.
- You can laugh at people when they tell you how much you look like your aparents.
- When everyone else is running away from the skeletons in their closets; you get to run towards them in your search.
- You can answer "Probably" whenever someone asks "Do you have relatives in this area? You look so familiar!"
- You get to meet new people through the placing of long distance phone calls to total strangers.
- In boring meetings, you don't have to doodle - instead, you can practice forging your birthmother's signature.
- You have no problem sleeping at night, knowing that you have done your part to keep AT&T's profits high.
- You develop a close personal friendship with the postman.
- You can claim all sorts of "affirmative action" and minority goodies, then let THEM do the research for you to disprove your claim.
- You can read the delightful children's book "Are You My Mother" and cry.
- You can read the delightful children's book "Horton hatches an Egg" and cry.
- You can make fast cash by betting people that slavery still exists. You can prove that it does when your a-mother swears on a stack of Bibles that you "belong" to her, and gets angry when you say that you don't.
- We can take bets on when our actual birth date was, and with any luck, we might actually be able to find out who wins.
- When you can't answer any of the family medical history questions, you get to go through all kinds of cool tests at the hospital.
- You can laugh at people who say "You look just like your mother or father."
- You can blame your promiscuity on "genetic destiny."
- You can warn those around you that you are probably a "bad seed" and might, therefore, snap at any time....
- You're the only one who roots for Edmund at a performance of King.
- You don't have to worry about living up to some potential; anything we achieve is perceived as up from our dark beginnings.
- You're well practiced at pretending to be grateful!!
- Someone in this country just might need one of your kidneys.
- Medical history forms at the hospital are a cinch, advantageous.
- Your children benefit!! No one can say they look like Great Aunt Edna!!
- You can explain away any deviant personality flaws as genetic "features" rather than a poor upbringing by your aparents.
- You can try and get out of jury duty by pointing out that, even though you're over 21, the probate court still considers you a minor.
- The photographs of Anne Geddes take on a whole, new perspective (photos of babies nestled in peapods, babies' faces in the middle of cabbages, etc.)
- You can earn a Geology degree in the process of trying to find out which rock you crawled out from under.
- When your high school teacher makes your class write essays about their family origins, you can break out crying and be sent to the library to read porn while everyone else is stuck writing books the size of Alex Haley's!
- You get to see all the nifty faces people make when trying to act casual after you have told them that you're adopted.
- You always have a reason to be depressed.
- When caught with a dumb look on your face it can be explained away as simply pondering your roots, true identity, or other related topics.
- You can learn to sign your amother's signature fluently for all those affidavits. You are 35 years old and she STILL insists (even though you know better) that she remembers the labor pains, and that folks keep getting you confused with ANOTHER baby they adopted and returned because it had a hole in its heart. Then *YOU* were conceived. (TRUE STORY!)
- You can "not live up to your potential" and blame it on your afamily, but act like a smartass and blame it on your bfamily, or vice versa.
SOME REALLY, REALLY, GOOD EXCUSES WHY YOU WILL NEVER OBTAIN ANY OF YOUR ADOPTION RECORDS
- Let's get started.....
- Your records were destroyed in a fire. Everyone join in!!!
- A beaver ate them, right before we blew him up.
- We have given your records to your bparents for safekeeping, contact them.
- Have you seen the movie "TWISTER"?
- Your amom, Celeste, has them......
- We sent them overnight mail on the last ValuJet plane.
- We already mailed the originals to you last month, and you signed for them.
- I am sorry to tell you that the information you requested is:
- Not open (sealed)
- Only accessible to your aparents.
- Was destroyed just a few days ago.
- Will be open for your inspection in 75 years.
- Was washed away by the great hurricane.
- All parties involved must agree to let you have it.
- We can't tell you who all parties are until they agree to it.
- The judge hates adoptees. (except at election time).
- What is a manifesto? (mexican food or something?)
- The filing cabinet is locked and we've lost the keys.
- Your records no longer exist on paper - everything is now done on computer. Unfortunately, the system just hasn't been the same ever since a temp spilled one of those McDonald's Shamrock Shakes into the mainframe last March.
- You need a court order.
- It's not *my* decision.
- Your records are filed under your name at birth, and since you don't know your name at birth, I don't know which name to look under.
- David Copperfield made them disappear on his last special.
- The dog ate your records. craig anne:
- It has become an X-FILE. The truth is out there.
- We had them stored on board Babylon-4 when it disappeared into Sector 14. Maybe Commander Sinclair can help you.
- (In your best Kosh voice) "They are not for you."
- Janeway's got 'em. You're screwed.
- Well, we ran out of confetti at the last Staff New Year's party and...
- Hmmm, they were last checked out by Dr. Frankenfurter. I'll try to phone him at his castle...
- Your lost mom and dad are your X-parents.
- Hospital: I'm sorry but your records were destroyed on your 18th birthday.
Adoptee replies: But I was here when I was 17 and you said that I could not have them until after I turned 21.
Hospital: Uh, Oh, Uh...well who ever told you that was wrong and it's too late now so... Anyways, what's the matter with you, don't you love your aparents.- I'm sorry but if you cannot prove that you were born at this hospital because the name of the hospital is blanked out on your birth certificate then I cannot release this file I have in my hands right now that matches perfectly all the other information that you gave.
- Please hold. ... (tell everyone in the office not to pick up line 3)
- We had a termite infestation and the hungry little devils ate your records.
- My son used the backs of your records to do his homework on and then the dog ate them.
- We were inputting them into our computer, destroyed the papers, and then, before we could create a backup copy, the system failed and all records were lost.
- Your records er... um have been hijacked by little green men.
- We can't find your records 'cuz... well, we just can't.
- Records, what records?
- You not only need a court order, but you gotta catch us on a good day or we'll give you some other lame brained excuse.
- "The records you requested are currently stored in boxes which have been used to build walls in our office. Files drawers stand on either side of these walls and cannot be moved, therefore, we cannot grant your Since this is about hospitals, I thought I would chime in:
- Whatever makes you think we're here to help anyone?
- No, sorry, I'm the janitor. The file clerks are on break. I haven't seen them this month.
- The person who does that no longer works here, and we don't have a replacement yet due to the 5 year hiring freeze -- damned HMOs!
- Those files were in the old hospital building which was torn down.
- Certainly sir/maam, just as soon as you pay the hospital bill for your birth expenses all those years ago, with accumulated interest.
- The doctor who delivered you has these records, and he's dead.
- Whooops! Code-blue! I have to go NOW!
- (if the caller is a woman) Certainly, but we need a semen specimen from you to confirm your identity.
- (if the caller is a man) Certainly, but we need a cervical swab from you to confirm your identity.
- We just shipped your records to the original country of your origin.
- We put the records on microfilm and they haven't come back from the Film Developer yet, but we expect them any year now!
- The attorney handling that case has all of those records, let's see,
- hmmm, it looks like a Mr. Vince Foster has them. Please call him about it.
- Your signature must be notarized.
- You have to give us your mother's name at the time of birth.
- Your name doesn't match the name on the records.
- Send us a check for $50.00 and we will get to work on it.
- We don't provide records to adoptees.
- There was a really cute stray puppy we were keeping in here sometime last year. We needed some papers to line the room where he was staying so he wouldn't do his business right on the floor and well...
- The wing of the hospital closed several years ago and all records are now missing.
- Our records administrator was taking them to be mailed to you. We don't know where he or your records are. He has Alzheimer's disease - wanders and forgets things.
- The records were put in a special burglar proof indestructible vault and the combination to it has been lost.
- "Our records were transferred to computer a few years ago, but many of them were lost or destroyed in the process, including the ones from the year that you were born."
The information you have requested (check as many as apply):
- ( ) Is a secret.
- ( ) May be revealed to faceless bureaucrats, but not to you.
- ( ) Is none of your business.
- ( ) Was lost in a fire/flood/civil disturbance.
- ( ) Was destroyed when the lawyer who took care of the matter died.
- ( ) Was destroyed after ten years, like all of our records.
- ( ) Was given to your adoptive parents when your adoption became final, and no other copies can be issued.
- ( ) Was false to begin with, and so will be of no use to you should you obtain it.
- ( ) Is the property of this agency.
- ( ) Can be discussed only with our original clients, the adoptive parents, and should they happen to be dead, that's too damn bad.
- ( ) Died in a car crash.
- ( ) Is the property of another government with whom we no longer maintain diplomatic relations.
- ( ) Was the property of another country's previous government, and was destroyed in the coup-d'etat.
- ( ) Will cost you three thousand dollars.
- ( ) Will take this agency three years to compile.
- ( ) Is information you gave away all right to years ago, when you signed those papers, and you should be ashamed of yourself for asking.
- ( ) Could not be found. Perhaps the file is missing. Sorry.
- " Born? You were not born, you were adopted! "
- During a renovation project for the Forum Building the entire building was contaminated with lead paint dust. While the rest of the building remained open during the abatement process, contamination in our restricted book stacks was discovered to be above safe levels and the stacks were closed to everyone.
- Lightening struck that section of the hospital where the records were kept and they were all incinerated.
- They were recycled into Duralogs during an environmental awareness period our administration was going through.
- We have no record of your being born here.
- The clerk had a severe attack of depression and ... used all the papers as tissues and wrapped herself up in all the microfilm and submerged herself in hot water thinking they were "spa health wrap" material.
- Records? We don't have no stinking records.
- Since implementation of cost-cutting measures imposed upon us by the Reagan administration, several measures have been taken to reduce costs at all government facilities. Details of such measures are not available but let's just say toilet paper ain't cheap!
- Well, we could tell you - but then we'd have to kill you.
- Your birthfather swore us to secrecy so you wouldn't come after all his money, or worse yet, Windsor Castle.
- Those records can be released upon your death. If you are, indeed, deceased, please provide a death certificate matching the name on your birth certificate.
- We'll be happy to release that information upon written request from your birth mother. (TRUE)
- If she didn't want anything to do with you then, what makes you think she wants anything to do with you now? (TRUE - well, ok, it wasn't a person who could actually get to the records anyway.)
- Your birthmother doesn't want to share Graceland with you, so we can't tell you who she is.
- Don't be ridiculous. You died at birth. It says so right here...
- Those records were taken by the FBI. An agent named Scully signed for them.
- You need clearance from the Atomic Energy Commission to receive that information.
- You are in a witness protection program, and I can't tell you who you are. In fact, I'm not speaking to you right now.
- We had a problem with the ink that year--it disappeared from the records before they could be computerized.
TOP TEN LIST OF THINGS THAT ANNOY ADOPTEES:
- People whining about how adoptees should stop whining.
- "You're lucky - you were chosen."
- Whaddaya mean it's none of my business who I am?
- Filling out the medical questionnaire at the doctor's office.
- "I adopted a puppy once!"
- "The Freedom of Information Act? Oh, it doesn't apply to Adoption!"
- "You should be grateful that someone took you in."
- Possibility that your birthfather is someone like Bill Clinton or worse.
- Possibility that your birthmother is some woman named Hillery or Monica.
- Theme dinner parties: Bring a dish from your ethnic background. You end up bringing a ton of mystery meat!
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