Mistaken Identity. June 10, 2009

So yesterday, I decided to be a good citizen of my country and go talk to a local agency about volunteering with young moms… While I love to talk about things that I love to talk about, I also realize it’s a good thing to sometimes do a little in regards to those subjects I love to talk about. Whilst living in Tennessee, I volunteered for four years with a program that I definitely think was headed in the right direction. Here, where I’m living now, I haven’t seen anything similar so I decided to bite the bullet and go to a crisis pregnancy support center.

 

Growing up southern Baptist (in the south), I already know about these places. In fact, when I broke the news to my parents, the first place my mom took me was the local pregnancy support center, where the first thing they did was A) ask my best friend who came along for support if she needed a pregnancy test too, and B) start showing me pictures of families who wanted to adopt my Caucasian baby. I think those two points pretty well summarize the world of pregnancy support centers. Faith-based, non-profits, with the goal of convincing girls to not have abortions. I don’t like abortions (who does?!), but there is a small glitch in this whole system. What happens to those hundreds of girls they convince not to have an abortion? We live in a day and age where adoption is much, much rarer and most of these girls decide to parent (hello, I’m included in that!). I think many of these centers started off with the plan of keeping girls from having abortions and then connecting them with adoptive families. The tides have shifted now though, and while random women in the grocery store will still ask you as a preggers teen if you are “old enough” to be having a baby, it’s generally a lot more socially acceptable to have children out of wedlock than it has been in the past. Shoot, even Hollywood has their pregnant teen icons in Jamie Lynn Spears and Bristol Palin. So now these pregnancy support centers have hundreds of girls coming through each of them, with about two of whom will actually give their baby up for adoption, and the rest of whom will go home to have children that they have no support to have. And then they wonder why these girls are back in two years and shake their heads in amazement at these sad, sad girls living off the system. Uhhhh…

 

So anyways… even though I’m not even really 1% committed to their cause, I figure I have something to offer to really help out and fill a void in the services they offer: a real world perspective on what it is like to be a teen mom. Someone these women can ask the questions they want to know that someone who hasn’t been there can’t really answer. When people are struggling with something in their life, they relate to people who have been in the same situation. Whether it be a battle with cancer, or a battle with drug addiction… people need relationships with someone who has made it through to the other side in one (mostly) whole piece. Most young moms don’t have this. Sure, their mom or their friend or their cousin may have been in a similar situation, but if those people have not experienced positive successes in their life, it’s going to do little more than cement the fact that the statistics are useless to fight. Whhhhy bother. So all this preachiness to say, perhaps I was being a presumptuous, but I went into this place with the knowledge I had something they needed.

 

So I walk in and the lady I’m supposed to meet with is running late, so they stick me in the waiting room. Right after I come in, a girl comes in with her pregnant friend indicating that she needs a pregnancy test. She fills out the paperwork and they sit down. I wait, wait, wait, and finally, someone comes to the door and calls out my name: Kimberly. I get up and we smile and she takes me into a little room with three chairs and Anne Geddes prints on the wall (you know, since creepy pictures of naked babies dressed in flowers is exactly what you want to look at while contemplating an unexpected pregnancy). The woman is wearing a cheap sort of lab coat and sits down across from me with an obnoxiously sweet smile and asks me how I’m doing. I smile back and tell her I’m “good” and ask her how she is in return. She blinks a few times and asks me, “You’re good?” My turn to blink. This isn’t the usual response to formalities such as these and I don’t like it when people upset social norms (it’s the sociologist in me). I re-affirmed that I was indeed ”good” and tried for another forced smile as she leaned forward in earnest to touch my knee.

 

Awwwwkward. Why is she treating me like this? She has a clipboard and writes something down. Am I in a therapy session? I don’t understand. “So, Kimberly…” Pause. Smile. “Let’s talk about what brings you here.” I’m super uncomfortable, but I begin, “Well, as someone who was a teen mom…” The woman cuts me off: “OH! You already have children?” “Um, well not childREN, but a child. Singular, yes.” “And did you come here when you were pregnant?” “Nooo… I just moved here.” The woman is writing furiously on her clipboard. “Interesting… where did you move from?” I tell her, she asks me what I was doing there and I tell her attending college and graduate school and now it is her turn to look perplexed. “You’ve been to graduate school? Already?” On a sidenote, I know I look young, but seriously?! What is this woman talking about?!? I nod yes in a retardedly slow fashion. She looks at me for a few more moments before she goes, “Well, let’s go ahead and get this show on the road.” At this point I’m contemplating ways to escape the room with tact. Her chair is in front of the door, so I would have to knock her over to get out. Window?

 

She stands up and shuffles behind her and then hands me a cup. I take hold it in my hand and hold it out in an awkward angle from my body. “The bathroom is down the hall to the right.” WTF. “Um, shouldn’t I fill out an application to volunteer or something before you drug test me?” She freezes. “Drug test? We don’t do drug tests?” “Why am I peeing in a cup then?” “Ummm… a pregnancy test??” Blink. “Ummm… I don’t know how I would be pregnant right now.” Blink. “Then why are you here?” Blink. “Because I was going to talk to J*** about volunteering? I’m guessing you’re not J***?”   

 

Of all the names for the girl in the waiting room to be named… she was also named Kimberly. And not only was she a Kimberly, she was a Kimberly A. Talk about an awkward realization on all parts. I was relieved to determine this was not how they treated volunteers, but sadly, I cannot say that the rest of the meeting went much better once the mistaken identities were sorted out. Oy veh.

 

So I guess I will have to be a good citizen of my country at some other fine institution, but in the mean time, I need to go take a piss… and not in a cup.

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