What I Don't Want H to Become...

OK, I have posts rolling around in my head...about aspects of the China adoption community, about friends lost when a discussion could have saved it, about why we chose what we chose in respect to IA, my ongoing mother angst, all this hard stuff, I just can't bring myself to tackle...

So, I want to tell you about a girl in my local community college Mandarin class...it's mostly review for me, but at least for 2 hours a week, I'm hearing a native speaker and being forced to use it again...(I do want to tell you though, it's amazing, I swear my daughter is saying "ai ni" to me sometimes now.) This girl is the epitomy of what I don't want H to become...

First off, she lives in the next town over, and her parents must be quite well off. I consider us well off, I think we could probably describe her parents as "stinkin' wealthy"...they pull up to drop this high schooler off in an Infiniti SUV (MSRP 55,050 - I looked it up for snicks). Why is she taking this class? She wants to spend a year of school in China.

Yet, when I said my H is from Hunan, one of the more well known provinces, she asked if that was a country.

She wants to be a pilot someday. I said that it's too bad she wasn't 30 years older, cause it's not what it once was (my mother was an FA for 37 years.) She answers that it's a cyclical industry, so in 10 years, everything will be wonderful again. I tell her how some of my mother's friend's daughters that ended up as FAs too are working full time and on welfare, and every day think they are out of a job. I tell her how it's become something that no one ever thought possible. She says she'll make good money as a pilot some day. But she's never taken a lesson, or done anything to move towards this goal.

She shows up with books like "Vegans and Vegetarians in America". JessuzChrist, you have pointy canine teeth and eyes in the front of your head, child. You are a hunter. Eat a cow. Then it comes out that this is why she wants to go to China - she perceives it as a vegetarian friendly country.

She carries her expensive purse with her high end phone and IMs her friends during class, and she wears diamond studs in her ears. She has no realization of the world outside her suburb, I think she probably thinks she's slumming it by going to a non-credit community college class for this. She every week tells me to bring my daughter to class, cause she could hold her.

Oh, and about my daughter...she now also wants to adopt from China some day. I told her I don't think there will be a program by the time she's 30. I told her there will be other countries by then. She wants to do China, cause of "the girl thing."

She's one of those kids that is young and idealistic and hasn't a flipping clue about the real world. She thinks that whatever she wants, she will get, and probably has gotten that her whole life. I want my daughter to be aware of the charmed life she leads. I want her to see the world outside of hers. I don't want her to be a follower, deciding on whims that she is going to do this or that. I don't want her to be a spoiled self-centered brat.

I'm just shocked that this girl has to hitch a ride from mom in the Infiniti - I would think it would be hers already.

OK, I'm officially going to start wearing support hose with those rubber sole nurses shoes now...and chase kids off my front lawn, I guess.