My Kids Will Be Fine

This election I have worked hard to stay away from all the toxicity on the internet, but it has been impossible to avoid the blatant fear mongering on Facebook. It’s been post after post warning about this or that. Let me give you an example. 

I have a friend whose kid has an IEP for some learning disability. Not the one everyone talks about all the time, the other one. She just went on and on about the Department of Education, and if Trump gets rid of it what would happen to her kid. I get posting once, but five times? 

My mom’s aunt who is gay was out of control. Apparently she had a sign in her yard about how love is love, and it got stolen ONE time. And then when she replaced it someone threw dog shit at it. You would have thought that she LIVED at Facebook with the amount of posting she did about it. 

There was one post from a neighbor that I did click on and think about. To be honest, I got tricked. She posted a picture of herself laying in a hospital room. Don’t worry, she wasn’t dead or anything. I figured she’d had her gallbladder removed or something like that and was posting a Meal Train. Instead, the post she made was all about her miscarriage from a couple years ago. 

This is a picture of me after having a medical emergency when I was 18 weeks pregnant. Losing the baby we wanted so desperately was the hardest day of my life. Thank god for access to the life-saving procedure…etcetera, etcetera. 

I ended up being kind of embarrassed by her post. First of all, in the picture she looked terrible. And secondly, I’m on an IUD right now. Probably lots of women reading her post are on birth control. So this situation wouldn’t apply to them. 

I wanted to make her feel better, so I left her a comment. (She had like 200 comments, if you can believe it!) I wrote, “I don’t have daughters.”

Well, you would have thought I’d said that her hair looked like crap in that picture or something. Comment after comment on mine, saying things like “What is that supposed to mean?”, and “How is this helpful?”, “Wow, good thing you understand the point of this post!”.

I was shocked. I obviously said that because I wanted her to know that neither me nor my kids weren’t going to be in this situation. Shouldn’t she be happy for me?

I try to be a very informed voter. I decided to look back on the post from my cousin that listed all the ways that a Trump presidency was going to make America worse. 

And you know what I discovered? Practically nothing on that list applied to me. We are US citizens, we hardly ever go to the doctor, and not to brag, but between the two of us my husband and I make over $130k per year. All those tax breaks for the wealthy are only going to put more money in our pockets. 

So I went back to my friend’s post, the one about her kid with the learning disability, and thought I’d share some good news. Something to counteract her negativity.

But don’t worry– I learned my lesson from my neighbor. I realized that people were jealous that I don’t have daughters and figured I was bragging about it. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. Here’s what I wrote:

I think you should look on the bright side. If your kid is not getting support at school anymore, you can just homeschool her and teach her to read yourself. You are always talking about how busy you are, so it will be a good opportunity for you to take a break from your job and stay home. My kids get straight A’s really easily, so I can’t do this. Consider yourself lucky! We all want more time with our kids! 

I’m normally not an emoji person, but I followed it up with a pink heart, the pink heart with stars, and the double hearts with the little swirly sign around them to make sure she knew I was ultra supportive. 

Then, the strangest thing happened. I wasn’t getting any notifications that she’d liked my post or anyone commented. Nothing. I tried searching for my friend’s name and I couldn’t find it anywhere. No profile picture, nothing. 

Facebook must be down or something. 

I hope they fix it soon, because now that the election is over it’s the holiday season and I have to get going on my 12 Days of Christmas posts. This time, the boys are going to dress up like elves and pose in front of our tree with each gift we give them on the twelve days leading up to Christmas. They love that tradition, especially the dressing up part, and I know that those pictures are not only going to bring people some positivity but also be a good reminder to the world that my kids are just fine. 

And that’s all that matters.