Why You Don't Feed Stray Kids

I was emailing with Jay about something he has coming up, and I was joking about making sure it has nothing to do with taking in stray kids. He replied back that I misspelled and typed "stay" kids, but honestly, I think that is exactly what I meant. You start out with a kid showing up at your door, then he stays over for the night, then for a few weeks, and before you know it, that stray kid just became a stay kid. Sally Struthers and Marlo Thomas and that weird Santa Clause looking guy on the commercials want you to keep them, but you really shouldn't. It's a lot like feeding the pigeons. It's cute the first couple of times, but not so much when they bring friends and suddenly you realize there are more of them than you.

This actually happened. The stray kids, not the pigeons. Adopting a child or two was one of the biggest factors in our ridiculous rationale for having left a perfectly nice home, jobs, family, and lifestyle in AZ (that's all made up 'cuz I hated AZ anyway, but it makes the story sound better). We already had 3 kids. Jay was {ahem} no longer able to go forth and multiply, and we were going through an emotional and spiritual and even (dare I say?) human crisis. We were in a position to have an amazing home that would easily allow for the addition to our already amazing family, and who wouldn't believe that some sad child(ren) would be the icing on the cake of this whole amazing journey. Or so we thought.

We didn't adopt any kids. The main reason was they wouldn't let us (we were too old, we were white, we already had our own kids). You name it, everything that we thought would make us PERFECT parents, apparently were fighting against us. The other reason was simply that we found out we don't LIKE other kids.

As we wrestled with the notion that we were now 2000 miles away from all friends and family, we didn't like our new town, we absolutely HATED our new neighborhood, we discovered that the non-adoption was a blessing in disguise. There were just way too many times we would find stray kids in the neighborhood (yes, just like cats and dogs) and any attention, however good or bad, is just as addictive to them as is a can of tuna left out for a sad lonely kitty. You didn't want one (it doesn't matter now if I'm talking about stray kids or sad kitties at this point, 'cuz the premise is the same), but now you have one. Everytime you drive up. Everytime you open your door. Everytime you try to enjoy an evening in your fenced backyard (fences, we discovered, can be climbed, both by stray cats AND kids). This is not one of the Queen's fables. This is a real story of why we did NOT take in any stray kids, stopped encouraging the stray kids (which unfortunately meant no longer letting one come to our back door and ask for cookies), and we finally stuck a for sale sign out front, battened down our hatches (whatever those are), and prayed for a quick extraction.

My point is that no matter how much you think you'd like to help stray/stay kids, the brutal truth of it all is that you find your heart isn't filled with love and generosity and a need to pay it forward. Helping stray/stay kids doesn't make you Sandra Bullock, married to Tim McGraw and creating an NFL football player. However, you DO get the blind side, and that is simply this: No matter how cute the pigeons are when you feed them and how they almost seem to react in impossibly human manners, no one ever truly gets attached to them in any emotional way, and you definitely do not want them following you home. So next time you're eating outdoors or you're just noticing some new kids in your neighborhood, remember: DON'T FEED THE STRAYS, OR THEY BECOME STAYS.