My Favorite Mistake

Hmmm. I thought that this would be an easy and fascinating topic.

It's not. It's hard.

So, I figure that probably, **I** am my favorite mistake. The title is ambiguous. The possessive pronoun "my" could either modify "favorite" or refer to "mistake." (Yes, I taught grammar and was hated by poor first-year college students. Why do you ask?) I will take it in the former sense.

I don't have a mistake child. I am one.

[Side note: Being one, I'd prefer not to ever have one. That could, partly, have to do with an abject fear of pregnancy, but I think mostly it's that I can't, at the moment, picture myself as a responsible enough adult to take on another human. I'd rather get a dog someday (and I'm not responsible enough for that yet, either.)]


My existence, in general, was a mistake. Don't take this the wrong way -- I mean this in a light-hearted sense. I do not have misguided, retroactive self-pity about a bunch of circumstances which I had no control over. Two kids had sex (damn bad Catholic kids who have either entered Catholic recovery or are still going to hell). I was born. Two people who didn't have children and wanted them were "discovered" and I had a family. The stars aligned, or some such nonsense.

Actually, my theory on adoption is this: it isn't fate, it isn't luck, it isn't some crap of a "blessing." That's all bullshit. It is a group of faulty human beings who are trying to create a workable solution to a series of problems.

Problem 1: birth control is inadequate in response to the human reality that kids, who are by nature not yet all that responsible, are having sex, which yields
Problem 2: unintended pregnancy, which yields
Problem 3: kids, in general, probably shouldn't raise kids.
Problem 4: there are adults who would like to be parents and cannot or do not want to biologically reproduce.
Since problems 3 and 4 can be combined to create a workable solution, there you go.

In general, it would be great if things happened according to plans. We all make plans. They go skittering off the rails more often than not.

Sometimes? Things work out okay, though. All of the weird circumstances that make up my abominably normal life are things that I wouldn't change. Even the lowest of crappy moments in my life are things that I cherish.

And that's enough of my mid-year existential review of my bastard-ly beginnings.