Adoptive Dads recently mentioned a new law in Italy prohibiting prospective adoptive parents from trying to choose the ethnicity of their children. Kind of leads one to wonder just how diverse a nation Italy is…

I mentioned in a comment there it might be a good law for a country which is diverse, but i can’t imagine it being a good idea in the US because we still have too many racist communities. The community i currently live in is a perfect example. Bad place to raise a non-white child.

So yes, if i were to start the adoption process today, living here, i would ask for a white child. I prefer to avoid putting any child in a situation like a non-white one would live in here.

The next logical question, though, is how good is it for a white child to be raised in a racist community? How non-racist can a child become when he’s raised among adults who consider racism to be acceptable? Of course, we can’t go so far as to turn ‘you can’t adopt because your neighbours are unethical’ into law, but it is yet another issue to deal with.

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1. the this-research-sucks update

It’s mostly from 2001, but there’s one entry dated 2003. My fake-whiny-depressive-emo years. Yeah, i was one of those kids. Even if i’d written every day, i doubt i’d have any accurate records of that time of my life, because i was busy making every problem i had out to be a big deal. To re-read any of my writings, i had the worst life ev-ar and nothing i did would ever make it any better.

I actually don’t feel particularly bad about this. Yeah, if i could tell my seventeen-year-old self anything, it’d probably be something like ‘Oh, quit whining,’ but what teenager doesn’t have an over-dramatic, over-emotional, my parents are so horrible and nobody will ever understand me and life sucks! phase? Everyone i know did. Different ages, different reactions, and some have quite frankly never grown out of it, but everyone went through it.

My rather poor choice of how to handle the Over-Dramatic Years consisted of picking at every problem outside of my control until they eclipsed all the problems i could control, making my life out to be one big dramatic mess. I knew even back then it was a load of bullshit, but at the time this made me feel better – or at least i thought it did: ‘Look at my awesome self, managing to handle all these horrible disasters. Okay, so i’m not actually doing anything with my life yet, but give me a break, look at all the stuff preventing me from even managing the bare necessities!’

I thought i was proving myself to be strong. In reality i was proving myself to be weak – too weak to solve any problems on my own, to do anything but roll over and blame everyone and everything else for my problems. Self-deception of the most irritating form.

Actually, the really irritating bit is i’m starting to slip into those old patterns of self-deception again. You’d think i’d have learned my lesson, and i have, to a certain extent: i’ve settled on ‘content’ instead of ‘miserable’ this time around. I even occasionally poke ‘happiness’ with a stick. ‘But, but, but, i can’t do What-i-Want X because i don’t have enough money and i can’t get more money at work because of Problem Y and i can’t get more money outside work because of Problem Z…’

Quit yer bellyachin’, Emo Sherry.

random other stuff…

• I will stop linking to random Cat and Girl comics when they stop being horribly appropriate for the situation.
• I also like Gretchen Rubin’s post on positive arguments, if for no other reason than because it gives me an excuse to argue with myself :P

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A little speedpainting of the place i used to play when i was a kid, which wasn’t quite in my da’s backyard. I moved around stuff to fit all my favourite things in the picture, but i’m pretty surprised by how well i remember everything, even though i haven’t been back in years.

I’ve read a couple of articles recently (well, fairly recently, if ’sometime in the past year but long enough ago i can’t for the life of me remember where i saw them’ counts as recently) on how kids today play outside less than they used to. That’s a huge ‘duh’, and usually blamed on electronics sapping their social lives and the ever-increasing homework load of NCLB killing all playtime.

There’s been other articles, though, citing studies which indicate parents don’t let their kids wander as far as they used to. I know if i’d been banned from the neighbour’s cowfield and the little creek separating his property from Da’s, i’d probably have rarely bothered going outside. As it is, i’m fairly certain no other kid moving into my da’s old house will be allowed to play where i used to. Part of the area i used to play in is visible from the kitchen window, but not nearly all of it. Many parents – including my mother, come to think of it, though the creek near her apartment was far deeper and more dangerous than the one near Da’s – won’t dream of letting their children unattended near a body of water. And then there’s the Fence.

I have no idea why the Fence was initially put up – or, rather, i don’t know why it hadn’t been there all along. It surrounded the cow pasture of the neighbouring farm, but creek side of the pasture was left open for years. Maybe the cows simply didn’t enjoy crossing the creek. All i know for sure is, one bright autumn day when i was about ten, i scrambled down the bank with the intent of going straight to my favourite tree, and found my way blocked by this thin wire thigh-high Fence.

Had the Fence been there all my life, it probably would have actually been enough to stop me from ever wandering into the cowfield. As it was, it stopped me only long enough to determine the best way past it. It was too high to simply step over, too low to crawl under – at least, not without significant risk of touching it, and considering how much it looked like the electric fence my grandparents surrounded their horse’s field with, i wasn’t willing to risk it. So i instead followed the Fence until it brushed against a tree with a low-hanging branch, swung myself over, and went on my way.

It never even occurred to me the Fence might be intended to keep meddling children out of the cowfield, but only two weeks later the farmer saw me playing out with his cows and brought me some bread to feed them (yes, bread. Mouldy bread at that, which they eagerly devoured with their long green tongues. Cows rock.) It’s probably therefore fairly safe to assume he didn’t really care about me hopping over his Fence.

The next kid to grow up in my old house, though, will probably get in significantly more trouble for the same adventures i had freely. Eir parents won’t want em trespassing on another person’s property; then there’s the danger of hopping over the thinly-iced creek in the winter or crossing the rain-flooded stream on fallen logs and rickety footbridges in the summer, or attempting to be friendly with the two-thousand-pound animals who wander the same area. How many parents encourage such things nowadays?

Well, e’ll have at least one tree to play on. And even a tire swing.

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Still… the idea intrigues me. No matter how many times the smart, logical part of my brain says, ‘You’re already illustrating a book. And writing a book – three, in fact, during that time. Aren’t a few big projects enough? You have to add ninety-seven little extras?’

Then the more irrational part of my brain notices the local airport still offers flying lessons, currently promoted with the tagline ‘Who’s that lady pilot?’, and ‘learn to fly’ gets added to the list i keep telling myself i’m not making.

Maybe i should learn to drive a car first, though.

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