So those assholes who named their kid Adolph Hitler and then threw a fit when Walmart wouldn't put his name on their cake (Q: How much of an asshole do you have to be to make WalMart corporate policies look good? A: White trash white supremacists) has had their child taken away from them by NY DCFS. And not because of their child naming "skills."
Not exactly a happy ending to a fucked up story ("Adolf Hitler Taken Away from His Parents"), but it did provide me a smile when a Gawker reader commented on the picture of the "loving" family.
Apparently their love for whiteness doesn't extend to their teeth.
Another commenter told the tale of the system working (kind of) which I find weirdly encouraging.
And NJ DYFS does not play. My little guy got a bad bruise on his arm from the playground and I had a burly caseworker at my door two days later. Preschool falsely narced me out. Funny thing was, he rang the doorbell and we were in the backyard so he came around the back to my little yard. We were having a picnic with the dog. The caseworker took one look at me chasing and hugging my kid, and the spread of picnic food and the dozens of toys and balls and soft-landing surfaces I had put on the ground, and said to me, "Dammit, why they gotta waste my time like this!" And he had lunch with us.
Bonus Edition: My Life as an Allegedly Abused Child
When I was five years old, we were visiting my grandparents, and arriving later than expected, my dad hurried off with my mother's father to go fishing at dusk almost as soon as we arrived, not completely unpacking the truck. My younger brother Patrick was crying for his blanket -- with which he had a relationship not unlike Linus... except yellow. The blanket, not my brother; I was the one who was born with jaundice. Anyway, Patrick, who was maybe a year old, was crying and in a strange place and I was his older brother who was protective and nurturing and I also probably just wanted him to shut up. So I went to get his blanket out of the back of the truck and the tailgate, which was not securely closed, flipped open as I straddled it and threw me to the ground and I landed hard on my arm.
I cried quite a bit, but not as much as it hurt because I was well aware that my grandfather and other family members on that side of the family already thought of me as more of a wimp than I wanted them to think that I was -- which again a lot less than I actually was. As the night went on, it hurt a lot more, and I soon decided that ny uncle's notion that it was "just a charley horse" could no longer be seriously entertained. So after not sleeping much that night because I kept rolling over onto it, I decided to cry as much as it actually did hurt, and before the sun came up, my mom and dad took me to the emergency room. (My dad, I later found out, felt guilty about leaving my brother's blanket in the truck, and, since he had taken his tackle box and pole out of the truck, probably being the one who'd not shut the tailgate securely; this is probably why I was taken to the hospital instead of being told to toughen up -- as I had by others but never by him -- that was never the kind of argument he would make.)
It turned out my arm was broken -- not severely but definitely requiring a cast. Of course (well, of course if you know them), my parents were both very upset, but after it was set and even in a sling, I got over the pain. However, because they took so long to bring me in and because the story seemed a little fishy (attacked by a tailgate? really? and probably because we were two hundred miles away from home, the folks in the emergency room thought my parents were beating me and took me for questioning separately from them -- which just meant I was crying in one room and my mom was crying in the other. My story never changed as I told it , but they treated me like I was a liar and that I was in trouble -- not as any sort of potential victim but just as guilty as my supposedly abusive parents for protecting them with my story -- it really freaked me out.
So I guess all that I'm saying is please report abusive parents and spouses and pet owners and anyone else who is beating up on someone else. But get your facts straight too. And if you don't know for certain, get involved yourself if you can before you take your suspicions to a bureaucracy. Or stupid nurses who make a kid who hadn't slept all night answer their questions like it's the Spanish Inquisition.
(Please Note: Intensity of Nurse Ratched's questioning could be exaggerated in my memory by three decades of my anger.)
Also, my dad shortly thereafter sold his truck and he didn't own a pick-up truck until after his children were all grown. While the gesture is thoughtful now, it's also a bit silly, so my other lesson is -- recognize your guilt and act accordingly. (Second mini-lesson: my dad is awesome.)
