Thursday, February 05, 2004
 did you know im a father? yep. technically.
because nothing in my life is normal im the father of a child i have never met, from a woman ive never even touched, fertilized by sperm that was not mine.
how could this basic impossibility be reality?
because the contra costa court says so.
several years ago i was sleeping in the arms of my true love when i heard a thunderous pounding at the front door. this was odd because she and i lived in a gated apartment complex and nobody knocked at our door ever.
it was 5am.
at that point i was new to the xbi and i had the 6am - 3 pm shift so i was used to waking up early, but not in that manner.
i went to the door and it was the sheriff. they were serving me with some documents. i opened the package and scanned the contents and realized that i was being accused of being some 10 year old girl's father.
relieved that it wasnt something serious or possible, i crawled back into my bed and assured my truest that everything was gonna be ok.
when i got home at 3:30pm i read the top page of the documents and saw that they were giving me two things i could do: 1) fill out the medium sized stack of papers or 2) call the number at the top of the page and "settle" the matter.
being someone interested in the possibility of settling something with a phone call, i dialed the damn number and was flat out lied to by the person on the other end of the phone:
just call back here every day for the next 30 days, she said, and we'll know youre not the father.
little did i know, but because i obeyed the representative from the Department of Children's Services i was falling for their ploy.
they knew that if i didnt fill out the paperwork and send it back to them within 30 days i would be deemed the father by "default judgement."
they never told me this, of course, over the series of conversations that i would have with them each day after work
somehow it slipped their minds.
this is just the begining of an interestingly scary part of my real life.
a part that is in this months Reason magazine in a good long article written by my buddy mr Matt Welch
who in his spare time sings and plays guitar in the Corvids
a cd you need to pick up immediately.
matt digs up some incredible stats and stories about how millions of men have ended up in the situation that i found myself:
fucked
whats interesting is i have taken two dna tests, i do not look like the "tall, dark-skinned" Anthony Pierce that the mother describes the father as being and yet my case still continues. it's now going into its third year!
it's one thing to set a trap and lie to people to get them into that trap.
it's another thing to keep them in there once it obvious that you have the wrong man.
there is a nebulous system that some people might feel the urge to raise their fists at,
but most of the time there are real people within that system who know very obviously that they could do something to right the glaring and obvious wrongs within that system
and when they do not
a demon gets his wings.
the reason piece + TPB, esq. analyzes it + as does cathy seipp + even the instapundit covered it
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Previously on busblog...
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