Chances are, you probably posted about that time you broke your arm. Did you have to go to the emergency room? That’s another data point in your history. And guess what, all these entries are date-stamped via social media for the whole world to see. With less than a handful of related social media posts, I can retroactively use those posts to sync your ‘anonymous’ data. It’s kind of like instantly removing every piece of hay from the haystack so all that’s left is the needle.
Because guess what, how many people broke their arm on the same day you did? Let’s give it a window of a few days in case the reporting is slightly inaccurate, or maybe you’re social media post is a few days delayed. How many people broke their arm in the same week... or month... that you did? Hell, let’s give it a year.
Or maybe you got in a car wreck. If the ‘anonymized’ dataset also provides geographic identifiers—so maybe we’re only looking at the work from a single hospital chain—we can find you.
I don’t want to get in the weeds too much here... but we can find you. And, suddenly, we know a whole lot more about you than you tell your friends... than you may even tell your parents or your partners. That meal you bought for two... that hotel room you booked at an odd time. If you’re having an affair, you better pay with cash. If you’re visiting a sick family member that you’ve been estranged from for years... so estranged that you changed your name... pay with cash.
I used to laugh at my mom for telling me to carry cash because not everyone accepts credit. Now I pay with cash for lots of things. If Mark and I are going to a big concert or something that I know he’ll post on social media, we pay with cash. Mark thinks I’m nuts and super paranoid (and I realize I’m sounding like my paranoid uncle who has a problem and won’t admit it).
But I’m perfectly sane about this. Your data is not safe. Forget the hackers. Social media companies share information amongst themselves. Large companies buy data... hell, credit card companies probably don’t even anonymize what you buy or where you buy it from.
Even if they do ‘anonymize’ the data, a clever spider can collect enough information to put the pieces back together.
If you give them that data. If you post about it. If you brag about your purchases.
These data-mining operations can know about every aspect of your digital life.
Alex and I have had long talks about internet privacy and what he’s allowed to post and what he has to think twice about. Mark sets the tone for all three of us. My husband is the over-sharer in the family (though, technically, this self-portrait eclipses all his transgressions several times over). If Mark weren’t to obey my rules, if he were to break down and post a picture of Alex on his public social media for all his thousands of followers to see...
I’d be fucking pissed. Honestly, our relationship would probably be called into question because this would be such a violation of my core beliefs. Those strangers did not follow Mark because he adopted a child or because he fell in love with a man. They’re following him because he has a nice face and, once upon a time, he had a tight body. He still has a lot of adoring admirers who call him handsome and compliment his muscles, but none of them know the real Mark.
The real Mark is just for me.
Sorry.
And to the guy who keeps at it with the foot fetish comments... Mark has a posting ratio to make sure one in every eight photos features one of his caveman feet clearly in the shot. That way, his foot fetish people always have at least one ‘money shot’ on the insta-grid to keep them scrolling down and down.
He’s manipulating you! Also, since your profile is public, if you post photos about drinking at your favorite restaurant or favorite... anything... I could probably track you down.
Just saying.
Data miners only need three instances where you’ve paid with the same credit card. Posting pictures of beers with friends will be the downfall of us all. Always pay with cash! Or resist the urge to share your ‘amazing’ night.
Or don’t piss off someone on the internet with all your unwanted comments about ‘incredible’ feet! His toes aren’t even symmetrical! His second toe is much longer than the others and it’s freaky as fuck!
THE KIDS HAD APPARENTLY gone to the creek to look for frogs, so I serendipitously went looking for them. The creek was beside a man-made berm that formed a narrow harbor from the rough Lake waters. Most years it formed a creek, but if the Lake was high, then it would form a very shallow basin that would stretch about half a mile and get overrun with lily pads. It was a great place to find frogs and turtles no matter what time of the year you visited.
So I thought I’d check up on the boys and see if Gabby had found them and maybe stop by to give them tips on catching frogs, which used to be good at when I was a kid. There was a grassy path which ran parallel to the gravel path on top of the berm. In this way, I was able to sneak up on them without alerting them to my presence. Call it spying or whatever, I just wanted to see Alex and Caleb in their natural habitat. The trees were too thick to see the berm, though I could see patches of pale blue sky through the leaves. However, they also weren’t thick enough to obscure their voices.
Caleb’s voice carried the loudest. I paused and listened to them chattering. They must have been on the other side of the berm down by the water because I couldn’t make out their words.
Then, “Just get out of here, Gabby.”
“You don’t have to be so mean,” Gabby retorted.
“You don’t know how to do anything,” Caleb taunted. “You don’t have any friends.”
I heard the crunch of gravel and a loud yell of, “I’m telling Mom.”
“No you won’t. You don’t know how to do anything!”
“Yeah,” Alex added. “You don’t know anything.”
It absolutely broke my heart. Alex was still really young, so the peer pressure thing shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did infuriate me. Brothers and sisters were not supposed to be at each other’s throats.
I heard Gabby bike down the gravel path and I was about to walk up to where the grass path met the berm... when I heard Caleb explaining things to Alex. Mean things. Poisoning Alex’s mind against Gabby and basically binding Alex’s loyalty to Caleb and Caleb alone.
I was fucking done with that shit. I jogged down to the intersection and busted my ass to find those two boys. My feet barely made a sound as I crossed the gravel. The boys were too immersed in picking up rocks and poking at turtles that they didn’t see me.
“Alex,” I said sternly. The boys jumped. “Come with me.”
Alex looked absolutely petrified. Caleb recovered from his startled expression to say hello to me.
“You don’t treat your sister like that,” I said. “I’m very disappointed in you, Caleb. Alex. Come with me. Caleb can play on his own for a while.”
Alex bowed his head and followed me, taking small steps and stumbling up the cliff to the berm. Caleb looked chastened, but I didn’t soften my stance. We turned our backs on the troublemaker. He could annoy the turtles by himself.
“Can I take the bucket?” Alex asked with a small voice.
“Caleb will take care of it. You aren’t to play with him.”
I ushered Alex along the berm at a brisk pace. My anger must have been palpable because he didn’t want to hold my hand. The kid started to drag his feet so I grabbed his hand and pulled him faster.
Then he started sniffling.
“Alex?”
More sniffles from him.
“Buddy? What’s wrong?”
We stopped walking and I waited patiently for him to recover.
“Is it because of Gabby?” I asked.
He nodded.
I knelt in front of him. “Were you mean to Gabby?”
He nodded.
“You know better than that. Don’t you?”
He nodded.
“That’s good. You shouldn’t be mean to your friends. Both Caleb and Gabby are your friends.”
Alex suddenly j
umped at me and wrapped his arms around my neck in a tight embrace and started sobbing uncontrollably.
“Buddy?” I tried to soothe him, but he was unconsolable. No amount of rubbing his back or telling him not to cry did the trick. “Everything is going to be alright.”
He wailed—I mean, he absolutely took these deep, heaving breaths like he wanted to stop crying, then he would go back at it.
It hurt me to see him like that.
I made shushing noises and kissed him on the side of the head. “It’s going to be okay,” I assured him.
“But Caleb was mean to Gabby... and now you’re going to kill him.” Alex had momentarily paused his sobs, but once he vocalized his fears, he returned to crying on my neck. He said the word ‘kill’ so that it came out like keewl and the cuteness of it brought a secret smile to my lips.
“Nobody’s going to kill Caleb.”
“Yes you weewl.”
“No I weewl not.”
He caught his breath, sobbed, caught his breath, sobbed. I pulled away from him and held him in front of me.
“Deep breaths. Let it go. That’s it. Deep breaths. There’s nothing to worry about. Caleb is going to be punished for being mean to his sister, but nobody is going to hurt him. And nobody is going to hurt you.”
“I’m sowwy.” His face seemed to melt into mush and his little pouting face was the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
“Buddy, don’t worry about it. You know better now. Next time you’ll be nicer to Gabby.”
Alex hiccuped. “Yeah.” He breathed out and hiccuped again.
“Do you want to apologize to Gabby?”
He looked up at me quickly and nodded. Then as I stood up, he grabbed my hand and we walked towards the campsite like that.
“What do you want to say to her when we find her? How about if we play a game together?”
“Otay.”
“Games it is. I bet she’ll play Trouble with you, if you asked really, really nicely.”
“How about Memory?”
“She’ll probably play that with you, too. Then later we can go down to the beach.”
On the one hand, I felt bad for creating this crisis—if I hadn’t yelled at them, the kids probably would have resolved this issue how kids normally do. But because I yelled, Alex got really upset and even though it tugged at my heartstrings, I couldn’t help but be somewhat amused by his childish fears. Apparently Alex knew my angry mood well enough that he thought I might kill a person!
In the midst of my self-congratulatory chuckle, I had a flashback to several months ago when Alex hugged me so desperately that first time. I remembered how weak he had been... and how abused.
All the humor from the situation immediately evaporated and I felt this overwhelming sense of shame—not for yelling and causing the crisis, but for finding any humor in it. The child I was responsible for was sobbing and somehow I found a grin on my face? After what he went through? How did I know what his life was like before me? Maybe someone had been killed in front of him. Maybe his father had threatened to kill people, or been threatened with physical harm.
How foolish of me. I wished that I could go back to thinking of Alex as a normal child. Why did I have to burst that bubble? Now my spirit was as low as Alex’s and I felt like sobbing myself.
We walked back to the campfire and Mark noticed something was off right away.
“Sup guys?”
“Have you seen Gabby?” I asked.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. We’re just looking for Gabby.”
Denise pointed to their camper where there was movement at the window. I walked Alex to the camper door and we knocked. Gabby invited us in.
“Hi Gabby,” I said.
“Hi Chris.”
“Alex has something he wants to ask you.”
Alex tried to push his way backwards through my legs, but I prompted him up the stairs and into the camper. He kept his head down and asked his question. “Can we play games?”
Gabby closed her book. “Sure. What do you want to play?”
Alex quickly flashed me a grin. “Memory.”
“We don’t have that.”
“We have that!” Alex pulled on my hand. “Don’t we have that?”
“We do. Do you remember where it is?”
“Yep.”
“Go get it and come back here and set it up on the table. Bring Trouble with you.”
“Otay!” He jumped out of the camper and hurried across the campsite to our tent—I’d have to tidy up again, but it was best to let him do this on his own.
Mark lumbered out of his chair and I clucked my tongue at him. He squinted in my direction and I spoke through the screen door. “Sit back down. I’ll tell you about it later.”
Mark sighed, rolled his shoulders and slumped back into his chair. I turned to Gabby.
“Is Caleb mean to you all the time?”
“Yes.”
“Are you mean to him?”
“No.” She shook her head vigorously, but that coy smile gave away the lie.
“I yelled at your brother today for not letting you look for frogs together.”
“I didn’t want to do that anyway.” She opened her book again and turned away from me.
“Right. Well, I don’t like it when brothers and sisters fight. I don’t want you and him to be fighting while we’re on vacation.”
“Tell him that.”
“I will. But you’re older and more mature. So if I get mad at you for being mean to your brother, you’ll know why. Right?”
She nodded.
“I love you kids a lot. You remind me of me and my sister.”
“I didn’t know you have a sister. I met your mom and dad.”
“My sister died when I was your age. A long time ago.”
“Oh.”
“She was a big sister to me. Just like you’re a big sister for Caleb.”
“Did you fight with her, too?”
All children fight. “I don’t remember. All I know is she was always there for me, looking out for me. She always had a ton of friends and I never had any. She would make fun of me when her friends were over, but when it was just the family around, we were best friends.”
“Caleb and I aren’t best friends.”
“No? Maybe you’re too close to the same age. How do you feel about Alex?”
She didn’t hesitate. “I like him.”
“Will you look out for him like he’s a younger brother?”
She nodded.
“Thank you. You do a great job with him and I’m very proud of you for that.”
We shared a smile as Alex came barging into the room. “I got the Memory but the game bag fell open and everything went everywhere and I didn’t know how to put it back together.”
Of course it did. Buddy, you’re a klutz. “Alright. I’ll get the Trouble. Or do you want me to set up the game for you?”
“I’ve got it, Uncle Chris.” Gabby sat cross-legged at the table. “We can play a few games of this.”
“Yeah!” Alex said. He stood on the seat opposite Gabby like he was about to start jumping. “Then we can play matching color game.”
“I brought my card game, too,” I agreed. “But you have to behave yourself. Gabby is in charge.”
“Otay.”
“I’m going to be sitting out here with Mark. Love you.”
“Love you, too.” He blew me a kiss and I reached over the small counter separating us and rubbed his head. He laughed.
I wandered out of the camper and sat beside Mark.
“What was all that about?” Denise asked.
“Kid drama. I overheard Caleb being mean to Gabby.”
“They’ve been at each other’s throats all summer. It started when Gabby moved up to middle school. Suddenly guys all have cooties and her brother is the enemy.”
“I got a little mad,” I said by way of apology. “Yelled at Caleb about being nicer to his sister
. I must have looked really scary because then Alex started crying.”
“Oh no,” Mark said.
“Yeah... it was bad. He sobbed in my arms and said I was going to kill Caleb.”
Mark softened his concern while Denise and Keegan both smiled.
“So where did you send my son off to?” Keegan asked.
“He was still looking for frogs and turtles when we left.”
“I’ll get him.” Keegan lumbered to his feet in much the same way Mark had done a few minutes earlier. Then he waved at something over my shoulder and smiled broadly. “There they are.” He laughed.
I could hear my mother’s voice carry over the distance between us. “Heellllo!”
Do you have to be so embarrassing all the time?
“We picked up a stray while we were checking out the ramp,” she yelled.
I looked in her direction and sure enough, there was Caleb smiling broadly from the passenger seat between my parents. All three of them hopped out of the truck and Caleb ran towards us.
“Mr. S said we’re gonna go fishing! They have a boat!”
“Look at that,” Keegan said.
Alex bolted out of the camper and ran to my mother with a happy laugh.
“Here he is,” she said. “We got a surprise for you.”
“For me!”
She laughed. “Hun, get the thing out of the back.”
“Chill a minute, woman. Sheesh.”
Mark looked right at me and mouthed, “Cheese.”
I rolled my eyes. “What is this so-called surprise? Mom?”
“Just wait. You’ll love it.”
She was always bringing little presents for Alex. Spoiling him. She’d only seen the kid a handful of times, but she made sure Alex remembered every one.
“I told you to stop with the presents.”
“It’s just a little thing.”
That’s been her line forever. Oh, it was nothing. It was just a little thing. Don’t worry about it, didn’t cost a thing. Or, my personal favorite, got it on sale. Did she recognize how much she sounded like her mother when she said things like that—her hoarding mother whom she used to mock mercilessly for the crap bought on sale? Not to mention her brother, whose basement was practically a department store of toothpaste tubes, soap, towels, and all manner of things bought in bulk and on sale.
The Foster Dad Page 9