My girls were in their first assembly last week, and sang three songs, one of which is a really cute ode to Martin Luther King, complete with hand gestures. They are so in to it, which is sweet to watch, but I mistakenly cracked a joke on Facebook about how happy I was to see the end result of all this speech therapy be the two of them singing about “Martha Loofah King”. Which someone in a transracial adoption group I belong(ed) to on Facebook took umbrage with, missing the point (that I was making fun of my kids) and deciding instead that I was being disrespectful of MLK. I pointed out that as a Pastor and a dad, I believe Dr. King probably had a sense of humour when it came to little kids and the ridiculous things they say, and the next thing you know, I had to start deleting mean comments from my Facebook wall, and got to watch my character be ripped to shreds on a message board normally filled with parents bemoaning the rude things people say to them, as white people raising black kids. So, yeah. That happened.
Since I try to keep Facebook completely drama-free, by following what I believe to be the basic tenets of online adult lady life (no vaguebooking, nothing passive-aggressive, stay positive, be self-deprecating, and don’t post more than 2-3 times a week), it was a bit of a shock, but honestly, most online adoption groups are just fueled by women itching to be insulted by something, and begging for a fight.
So, there you have it. I got thrown out of a private Facebook group, and now I guess the next step is Instagramming a bunch of morose-faced selfies with a lot of passive-aggressive hashtags. Or not. I am not even sure where this story is going, except that I think the phrase ‘Martha Loofah King’ is the funniest thing my kids have said all week, except for that other time they told me the milk was drunk (which is why they couldn’t get it off the shelf in the fridge. Drunkenness), and that other other time that one of them pointed out the difference between the two of us, by explaining that she is FIVE, and I am one HUNDRED and FIVE, and then I told her I was scratching her name out of my will and called her Froggy Fartsinpants, and she screamed with laughter while I tickled her into submission. How on earth do people find the time to get so riled up online when there is so much offline silliness to be had?