Why Madonna is smart to adopt

The queen of pop has spotted some advantages, says one adoptive father

Madonna is having trouble adopting a second child from Malawi.

The wealthy pop star, 50, is too old to adopt a Western child, and anyway prefers gathering small, brown, needy people to share her mansion.

I wonder if I can persuade her to adopt me? I'm house-trained, most of the time, which is more than can be said for babies.

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Madonna and I are already mentally in tune, anyway, since all my children are adopted.

There are huge advantages to acquiring kids that way instead of the biological way.

The most useful is the "instant disownership" option. Whenever my offspring commit gross acts of misbehaviour in public places, I just slightly adjust my body position to face away from them. Hey presto, they look like someone else's kids. Heh-heh.

If their tantrums reach truly horrific proportions, I turn back and glare in a hostile manner, as if to say: “I wonder which utterly useless parent dragged up these vile brats?”

One can even leave the scene, assuming the children will eventually notice and follow. (And if they don’t, well, is that the worst thing that could happen?)

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Incidentally, this technique also works if you have a spouse of a different ethnic background. If my wife is doing something deeply embarrassing, such as drooling over pictures of Johnny Depp in a celebrity magazine at a bookshop, I simply step away, shaking my head in amazement at the base nature of modern women. (My wife usually notices I have gone after a brief interval of half a day or so.)

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The other advantage of adoption is the level of hygiene involved in "initializing" the procedure. During conventional conception, there are numerous huge risks, the biggest being germs, stickiness and embarrassment, not necessarily in that order. Contrast that to the adoptive parents' technique of sitting fully clothed in an office and filling in Form A-162 (b).

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An unexpected advantage of having adopted children emerged when the kids started going to school. Natural offspring wave the genetic flag of their parents. If the child turns out to be pitifully dull or shows violent criminal tendencies, mom and dad feel personally to blame.

But adoptive parents can relax. Every time junior does something bad, you blame the birth parents. If does something good, like solve Fermat's Last Theorem at the age of three, you take full credit. "I showed him that," you say.

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An intriguing bonus of adopting children is the little genetic surprises that they have hidden within them. For example, my family all love Chinese food but recognize that some dishes can be non-child-friendly. At one restaurant, large bowls of a particularly ghastly glutinous soup were put in front of my offspring. I expected howls of protest on the lines of: “Yuk! It looks like a bowl of snot.” But my genetically-Chinese kids lapped it up and asked for more.

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Of course, some of the genetic surprises that are in store for us may be less desirable. Mine showed an obscenely early desire for mobile phones, even before they could walk or talk.

But all I had to do was shift my shoulders and do the disownership trick.

Look at those revolting brats. Their parents should be shot. I wonder who they are? Heh-heh.

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Comments

[fardel]

Your very funny story is double sided ;
Just replace ;"I" or "me" by "they" or "them" in your story and "we" are going to get another good laugh:
When one looks Dutch and one's natural daughter is brown skinned ( or another color, comes to think about it) the trick of turning one's back works.
Both ways , as you did not say:
When this Dutch looking kiddult "acts" in public, the natural brown-skinned daughter looks at him like she sees this clown for the first time.
She might even applaud,and cheer for better credibility.
Everybody would think that she is a bystander enjoying the show;they would join the cheering, eventually.
At this point one turns into the most famous clown in town.

When the crowd is school teenagers, no need to act ,she does not know you, period.
Imagine when you speak to him/her , and she ignores you:the crowd would think that you are going bananas , talking out loud to yourself: the top , as an embarrassing situation

At this point one turns into the most famous banana in town.

the good news is :if this kid is naturally yours , you inherit his/her temper ( the tempered he/she inherited from you). which is good unless he /she is stubborn , and your spouse is stubborn....
In this case ,the only hope to a better life is that he/she gets married fast and sends you a little creature with a better temper.
( it cannot get worse, really)
The waiting usually does not take more than a decade or two.
But you are smart,you have inherited patience from your parents, and transmitted it to your offspring.
This is where having a natural offspring is an advantage:
But beware , those adult toys do not come with an operating manual .
If you mess up , it does not show until they turn 15.
The good news : the waiting time for improvement/marriage is usually less than a decade

[Vince A]

They say that insanity is hereditary (you get it from your children). Is it contagious as well?

[David Ratnasabapathy]

Not flesh of my flesh, Nor bone of my bone
But still miraculously my own.
Never forget, for a single minute
You didn't grow under my heart, but in it.

Fleur Conkling Heylinger

[Nury]

David, thanks for that quotation, it's so lovely, definitely one that I will keep and share with friends -- I know so many adoptive parents who will love it.

[David Ratnasabapathy]

It's beautiful. I've reread it I don't know how many times and it still moves me. It's so sad that that's the only poem by her on the Web!

[Grace aka blackbelt]

Sorry bud. This is so NOT funny. You find humor in suggesting that you might abandon your (adopted) children, many of whom, deep in their souls, feel abandoned already??

[Kin-ming]

Dear Grace, i know you are well-intentioned with your comment but no need to worry. Nuri has been writing for years abotu adoption issues. he has given speeches on adoption vocabulary and written books for adoptive families. his blunt joky manner may worry folks who believe in pussyfooting around the issues but audiences of adopted young people give him a great reception. its actually refreshing to hear someone not scared to see the funy side of adoption.

[Nury]

Grace, thanks for your comment, apologies if you felt offended, and thanks, Kin-ming, for your defence. My feeling is that there is probably more joy and tears and laughter and intensity of emotion in adoption than in any other human experience with the possible exception of marriage.

The column above is not about rejecting kids, but about the constant double-take that happens when people of one race adopt people of another race. All the adoptive families I know (large numbers of them) take the humorous attitude and laugh their way through these events.

One day, no doubt, one of my kids will write about column about the joys of having a dark-skinned dad. Every time I do something embarrassing, they can look the other way as if to say, "whose dad is that?!"

[fardel]

Hey Nury
Don't your kids get stiif neck,looking the other way ,all day, everyday?

[Nik]

re use of offspring.

In biology, an offspring is a product of *reproduction*, a new organism produced by one or more parents.

To say that they're your offspring, is not accurate.

(Sorry, I just have plenty of time to kill. I always loved your writing. I remember when I was a poor university student spending lunch time in the library just so I can read your funny and insightful articles.

hah! but i'm still poor.)