It takes a village...

I never understood the phrase "It takes a village to raise a child". That was what my Federation social worker used to say all the time. She loved that phrase. Had it on a poster on her office wall. I remember her saying it everytime she was looking for a new home for me. "It takes a village, Amara, sometimes a whole planet, to raise a child." Right. The planet didn't raise me. I raised me. She also used to shoot down my agrument saying that was because I wouldn't let them raise me. That never made sense to me. How do you let people raise you? They were all the same, a bunch of high-minded do-gooders who wanted to "open their hearts" to a "poor little orphan". I think they all saw that 20th century earth movie Annie one too many times and expected me to be a cute little lovable redhead who would burst into song and we'd all live happily ever after.

The idiotic smiles all went away the first phone call from school for fighting, disrespect, grade issues, whatever. Followed by the usual process: meetings with the teachers, counsellors, shrinks, and then the "maybe this isn't the best place for you" speech. After a few times you sort of start to wish they'd just start with the speech to save time. But what it does create is an interesting collection of messages on my birthday. They all for whatever reason feel obligated to send me a once a year message on my birthday. I really don't know why that is, some of them I haven't seen in ten years, but it's always the same message and each family adds to the list of random birthday messages. They all go like this

"Hi Amara! It's the *insert family name here*! Just wishing you a happy birthday! Hope everything is going well!"

Yeah I bet you do. If you really wanted everything to go well you probably shouldn't have returned me. This year I decided to have some fun and set up this automatic response to any message that is about my birthday:

"Hi this is Amara. I'm a prostitute who has contracted a terrible disease and will die a cold and lonely death because you never loved me. Assholes. Please stop with the yearly messages."

Might not be the nicest thing, and any idiot will know that's not true but maybe it'll make some of the stupid ones feel bad. Enough is enough. I'm all grown up now. Leave me alone.

Starfleet Uniforms

( Miniskirts are NOT practical uniforms. )