A chance encounter...

This blog is all about honesty, so I'm laying it out. Keep in mind that this incident involves my children and I am one seriously protective mama bear! I normally try to be very tolerant of people and give people the benefit of the doubt and be a proactive educator - not a cranktastic pointer out of mistakes...this is not my most Christian-like behavior

The kids and I were in the grocery store. A woman approached me and exclaimed, "How old are your kids?" So I told her. She said, "They're beautiful!" I thanked her. That's where things went south. "You know, my brother did that." I played dumb.... but my hackles were up. "Did what?" In a very hushed voice...."adopted." I said (in a normal voice), "Oh, my kids know they're adopted." (and I secretly thought - how the heck do you know that my husband isn't Asian?????) She says, "Oh, and it's much easier in your country than where my brother adopted." (and certainly she must know...) I took the bait and asked which country he'd adopted from. "South America." (I resisted the urge to tell her that South America is a CONTINENT and that there are many adoption programs among the countries that make up South America.) "Which country in South America?" "Bogatash." (Here I resisted the urge to ask her if she meant Bogota, which would be a CITY in the country of Columbia. I let it go.) "And it's a lot easier in your country (would that be America or....again, resisted urges to just ask her what country she assumed my kids were from) than in South America." I sort of smiled and started to walk away. Of course she followed me... "In your country you just take some gifts (now I'm presuming that she has assumed that 'my country' would be China. In South America, you have to take tons of cash or they'll just sell the baby to someone else." I did give her the benefit of the doubt here and assume that she was talking specifically about corruption in some countries in South America (I do not claim to know ANYTHING about adoption in S.A.- that may be alleged corruption and not actual) and was NOT implying that I "bought" my children for the price of a few gifts - or for any price. In any case, I didn't want to get into any of it in front of my children. She had a few more choice comments I won't detail here, she ended this lovely interchange with "Well he's really cute - oh, and she is, too." Lovely.