True Story©... Paternitable Questionality




      My boredom will kill me one day…
So I am sitting in the living room with the big TV, minding my own business one d--…

Wait!

Y’all know those commercials where the MOST vanilla and racially unambiguous American is talking to the camera about doing their ancestry.com profile to dig deeper into their own personal beginnings and at the end of the commercial they’re in full-on cultural appropriation mode?
So back to me and the big Vizio…
One time Mimi is at work and I am home with computers and no adult supervision.  I go onto one of those DNA testing sites and order up one of those kits through my job’s discount program.  I send the information in on the form and leave the DNA results open for matches to perhaps meet up with some unknown and undiscovered family members.  I mean, my aunt on dad’s side has done extensive research in an era where family bibles were the only way to learn things and mom’s side all knows each other well, so it felt harmless.

      Well, back in college, I may or may not have gotten involved in paid sperm donation when it was too hot to curb-serve small rate narcotics and weed on the side.  I was working three clinics each in my own and three adjacent counties who didn’t use interconnected systems, two donations a week each.  Two years of community college, then a year of regular college and another two of community college (don’t judge me), that means I was donating 12 times a month 8 months a year for five years.  I have no hand in how many of the samples actually got used or how many still have yet to be used, BUT I know that the above math means I was compensated for expressing 480 samples.
This ended at age 23, that was 2002.

      So as I go on through life; minding my business and only siring ONE legal child, born to me in 2011 all is well.
2017…  I should have fucking known better.




     How does one in my position respond to this?

This girl is 18, apparently exists as a nut I got paid to bust before I could even legally buy a beer.  I NEED to tell her that she is not one of my drunken weekend trysts, and that if she had been then I would be a very present and OVERTLY active part of her life.  I gave her my number.  When she called, then texted me, I invited her to lunch to explain it all…

     Me: “Look--…”
     Her: “Listen, you don’t have to---…”
     Me: “Don’t cut me off again, please”
     Her: “Sorry”
     Me: “Look.  I don’t know your mother, never met her.  I don’t know why she told you this story about not knowing me and creating this deadbeat story.”

The look on her face changed, I wish I could be surprised.

     Her: “But you couldn’t stick around after you--…”
     Me: “After I WHAT?!”
     Her: “My mother?”

I expected this.  I slid a manila folder with my contract(s) for sperm donation across the table to her.

     Me: “Open that, please”

She read the letterhead and chuckled.  She looked up at me.

     Her: “Are you…”
     Me: “Serious as it gets, babygirl.”
     Her: “I’m sorry.”
     Me: “No need for apologies.  You went on the intel you had when you got it.  Adjust to new information as you have it.”
     Her: “Well now my mama has some answering to--…”
     Me: “NO!”
     Her: “Huh?”
     Me: “She has her reasoning.  You’re grown now.  I guess the fundamental has it that I am your father, but I was never designed to be ‘daddy’ so only take this for what you will.  She brought you along on what she knew when she knew it.  I can not stand in front of that.”
     Her: “Understood.  Mr. [Redacted], thank you for closure.”
     Me: “My name is Phillip, call me Phlip if you're a friend.  You’re welcome.  For what it is worth, you favor all the other women in the family.  Your grandma, your auntie, your baby sister.”
     Her: “Pic?”

I showed her a picture of moms, my sister and Ava all together and she was immediately floored at the accuracy of my statement.  She thanked me for my time, I thanked her for her understanding and that was the end of it.

     In the months since, I have only heard from her sparingly.  I learned that her mother was a woman who I'd daydreamed my chances with in my more shy days in school, but was so mean to me that I never even bothered chancing it with.  The irony STILL causes me to wake up and randomly laugh now.  She wishes me (and her baby sister) happy birthday and me her.  She is in college and I am working with her on her creative writing every time she emails me about it.  Legally she knows I know that am bound to nothing, but she did so well on the way through that she asks me for nothing.

FB stalking tells me that her mother could have played her cards better for (strangely) the same AND better outcomes at the same time when we were 14.

Of the 500-some donations I was paid for 20+ years ago, I wonder how many I can expect to hear from now.
Fuggit, I got paperwork.  I can wait on 'em.

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