I once met a woman who looked remarkably like my sister in law and I said so to her.
She replied “Well, I hope you know her well enough to know I’m not her”. And was serious.
The day I moved into my dorm freshman year, a guy in line at the snack counter in the building tapped me on the shoulder and excitedly exclaimed, “You look exactly like my girlfriend back home! Here- look!” He then took out his wallet and showed me her picture. It’s amazing what people think “exactly like” means. We did both have blue eyes and dark hair.
While holding our Korean adopted son in various stores I would be approached and asked, “How much did he cost?”.
I was always gracious as I knew that they meant the adoption fees but…seriously?
“I wish I could be like you–you just don’t care how you look!”
(Said by a neighbor who couldn’t step out of her apartment without full makeup. I’m a jeans/t-shirt person who never wears makeup. It came across as an insult, but I do think she envied the fact that I didn’t worry about it.)
“I always wanted one of those.”
“Where did you get her?”
“No, where is she really from?”
My kid is biracial, not adopted. I never managed to be as ungracious as I should have been.
After my boyfriend of six years was killed in a car accident a few months before graduating from our university, I went to the store to pick up something before I left for the airport to go back to our hometown for the funeral and other stuff. A man literally laughed at me as I passed him and said “Smile! It can’t be that bad!”
The audacity still kind of floors me to this day. I learned from that incident to never assume you know what is going on with another person.
Strangest/meanest - I had a woman tell me I wasn’t a real mother because I only had one child and only children “didn’t count” because they were so easy to raise. This was after she knew we had lost our son.
That’s awful. I’m sorry someone would compound your pain in that way. My sister’s mother in law said the same thing to my sister because her sons were born by C-section!
A friend proclaimed that I was the only Republican she knew who wasn’t rich or stupid. My response was to laugh, and declare that, “Hey, I’m the only one in this room with a Prius,” while I was actually thinking “Maybe I’m richer and dumber than you think I am”. ?
I am the mother of boy-girl twins. I’ve had people ask if they were identical!!
Years ago, D1 went to a wonderful day care. One day when I picked her up one of the care givers said “You look great for having 10 children”. About the age of 3 she had 10 imaginary siblings who all had names and characters. When I told her that D1 was an only child, she said she was “very convincing”.
Many years ago, I was standing in line at McDonald’s , holding my very blonde, blue eyed one year old son. The woman in line behind me asked in all seriousness, “Is he an albino?”. Her friend was mortified!
I was traveling to my in-laws with my son who was a baby at the time. I stopped for a potty break and something to eat. A man in line looks at me and says something nasty to me about being a single teenage mom. I said thanks for the compliment but I’m 27 and married. Being young looking for a long time it gave me tremendous insight on how people treat young women.
The perfect comeback @eyemamom! I hate how judgmental so many people are in this country!
When my daughter, adopted from China, was 3.5, I (white) sent her to a daycare in Chinatown. After a few weeks, the workers there (mostly recent immigrants) told me that she and I looked more and more alike every day.
I also had a man tell me to smile in a store when I was shopping for some things for my mom’s funeral. I was floored. Also, my brother-in-law told me as the funeral was finishing, “You’re next.”
I was in a glamorous/hip bar years ago; and 40 weeks pregnant and out of place. Some lady bumped into me, and looked at me, and said “Oh. well Good for you” ---- I always wondered what she meant by that.
^ maybe just congratulating you
I’ve actually gotten far fewer comments or stares over the years about my daughter adopted from China than I thought I would, but a few were dillies.
When asked “What did she cost” or “What’d ya pay for her” I replied, Oh, about the same cost as a hospital delivery, except that insurance doesn’t pay for it. if I was feeling feisty or the person obnoxious I might add: BTW, you don’t buy a baby, you pay for the work of a gazillion people who help the process, along, down to the fingerprinter, the social worker, the person who fed and cared for her for months" ( Said with as polite a smile as I could muster.)
Once I bumped into a former co-worker just a day or so after I received my new daughter’s photo and personal info. For an adoptive parent this is kind of like getting a positive pregnancy test and sonogram rolled into one after months of fetility treatment. It was a mistake to show her the photo because her reaction?.. “It’s such a shame you didn’t adopt an American child. There are so many in foster care!” So, I asked her how many children she had adopted from foster care. her respone "Oh, I have my OWN children! (Well, ok, your reproductive choice is OK but mine isn’t?) To this day I want to give that woman a piece of my mind.
When baby was in my arms one day, a neighbor down the street stopped to chat as we strolled by her yard. She said, “actually, we almost adopted a little boy. We had his information and everything.” When I asked what happened she said, “oh, in the end we didn’t HAVE to. I got pregnant with my OWN.” What I never said to this woman (but the truth is): Actually, adoption was ALWAYS my first choice, the way I always felt called to have a child. And then I didn’t marry or feel ready to have a child until I was 42, so adoption was also the logical answer. But once we submitted the paperwork I was TERRIFIED of getting pregnant because my heart knew that MY daughter was in China. And the baby in my arms is no substitute.
But if you assumed I had suffered infertility or miscarriages, your little comment would have been a pretty cruel thing to say even if you didn’t mean it to be. But of course I didn’t say it. I smile an nod but never stop.
Another woman downtown called out “Where’s she from?” when daughter was a toddler. When I replied China, she said she can’t be from China. She doesn’t look Chinese. Because those people have those squinty eyes and she doesn’t look like that." She’s pretty (such a compliment!). She said a couple of ruder things that I won’t repeat. (I live in the central Appalachians. Enuf said). I swear she didn’t seem to realize she was offensive, she was THAT ignorant. Sick as I felt, I tried the informational tactic. I said there are millions and millions of people in China with a lot of different facial features. But “those people” are now “me and my child” and I think you ought to keep your mouth shut.
There are a couple of other bad ones, the worst, in fact, but I think I had better stop here, for now at least! Don’t want to dig up those memories today. I will say, though, that most responses of people have been non-intrusive or positive or politely curious, and parenting has been a joy.
My MIL takes the cake on this subject. She once announced, “Marilyn doesn’t like fruit.” This even though I had frequently eaten various fruit at her table in front of her. Turns out I had not eaten any of the peaches ripening on the kitchen windowsill that visit.
She also once asked with great concern when hearing about our upcoming Florida trip with then seven year old son, “Tell me, Marilyn, what is DS going to do in DisneyWorld?” I didn’t even know how to start answering that one… “Um. have fun?” Turns out her only experience there was the International part of Epcot. Her entire image of DisneyWorld was exclusively shops and restaurants.
MIL had serious tunnel vision.