I’m lucky, I know that. We’ve become parents to a little boy who for now seems happy and his needs are being filled to the best of our abilities. None the less, he wasn’t our first attempt at being adopted parents. After running a gauntlet of screening that lasted 3 1/2 years and included me having my fingerprints on file with the FBI (still not comfortable with that) and enduring a 4 day seminar addressing what we might encounter as adoptive parents run by women who I was told years later hated me because I questioned their methods I wonder what became of our first choice for a child. We had our sights set on a little boy of mixed Persian decent who had not reached 12 months. We learned everything we could about this little guy and that his birth mother gave him up for adoption because she felt she wanted more to do with her life than raise a child from an unwanted pregnancy. We all have choices to make and I guess hers didn’t include being a mother. Fair enough, everyone gets a little selfish from time to time no matter what the fall out might be. Which begs the question that if people had to go through to become biological parents what we were required to go through to become adopted parents the human race could very well be extinct within 100 years. We were the front runners for this little guy and we’re in the process of preparing ourselves emotionally and such for the go ahead when one month after our review we were told no. In the end they decided to put him with some other couple and gave us no reason why or how they came to that decision. So there it is, first place gets the kid, second place goes back to the end of the line. Was there anything we could’ve done different? We’ll never know. It’s social services job to place kids and clear out that backlog, especially if that child is from a minority. Turns out the number one child everyone wants in the UK at least is white girls under the age of 24 months. After that it’s white looking girls, white boys, white looking girls, mixed race Asian girls, mixed race Asian boys (the lighter the skin the better) Asian girls, Asian boys, mixed race girls, mixed race boys, black girls and you guessed it, black boys. Learning this my first reaction was an out loud “Fuck me”. It took me a while to process all that and I even had to call in and talk about it with some black friends of mine in London and ask them how this was possible. They laughed and told me that even when trying to get into a loving family it was still ‘get to the back of the bus’. Understandably how would you not be pissed off and disappointed at society? I’m white, lucky to have a roof over my head and still able to make a living at what I love doing and I’m still pissed off. I really need to cheer the fuck up. The only thing I can do is raise my son the best way I know how and even then I’m sure I’ll get a bunch of stuff wrong. For starters I’m building him a motorcycle and yes one day he’ll see that back in America daddy owns guns. I’m from Idaho, everyone has them. I’m not shoving the 2nd amendment in everyone’s face it was just one of those things we all grew up with and yes I think the NRA now is evil. More on that later…