« The Daily Memo - 10/10/06 | Main | “If I could make my eyes actually bulge right out of my head, I would!” »
Children Can Only be Returned if they’re Still in the Shrink Wrap
I don’t know if it still exists, but back in my college days, Wal-Mart had a 100 percent Money-Back Guarantee, with no questions asked. It was a pretty fantastic policy, actually. People would buy lawn mowers in the spring, and return them in the fall. Often at Christmas, when I’d get a pile of shitty presents I had no desire to keep, I’d just take them all to Wal-Mart and return them, whether they originated their or not. It was usually good for $100 or so. No questions asked.
Anyway, this story isn’t apropos of anything. I was just reminded of it when I read about a 57-year-old woman who decided that she, too, wanted to make a return. Only it wasn’t at Wal-Mart. And it wasn’t a crappy Nelson cassette. It was her adopted child.
Yep. Helen Briggs is trying to un-adopt her son. In her own words, she says, “You don’t want to throw somebody away. But sometimes you have to.” Well spoken, Ms. Briggs. Well spoken.
It’s not as though Briggs doesn’t have a good reason for returning her adopted son. In retail parlance, he was defective. He’d been in and out of foster homes since he was 16 months old, he was physically abused by his biological parents, and he was possibly bipolar - all of which is a bit like purchasing a new plasma screen television and learning that it was missing several channels.
But Briggs’ real beef came when her adopted son molested a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old and was deemed a sexual predator by psychologists, which is more like finding out that your new plasma TV was missing channels and wasn’t cable-ready, and that its only working channel gave you violent seizures that compelled you to pick up an axe and chop up your neighbors. What’s more, social workers only told Briggs that the kid was “hyperactive,” though case workers are kvetching that Briggs is just trying to get out of paying child support. I bet they never hear that one at Wal-Mart.
Comments
The best part of this post is the last paragraph...
You failed to mention that she had the kid for SIX YEARS before she decided to "return" him.
Gimme a break.
Posted by Sharla | October 11, 2006 4:36 PM