Then one day she sees her own face on a milk carton, feel compelled to call the number and find out if it's really her, and then all hell breaks loose. She's forcibly removed from her grandparents house and made to go live with her real parents, the grandparents have to prove to the cops that they knew nothing about it and really did think she was their grandkiddy, and a generally awful time is had by all.
I remember, at the impressionable age of 15, just loving it! It was so angsty, so melodramatic. I got to be righteously indignant on behalf of the girl, feel bad for the parents, feel even worse for the grandparents, and generally twist myself up into emotional knots all the while knowing that it was completely implausible and probably would never happen.
Except that apparently it did happened to this poor guy [link].
For those who don't want to click on the link, the cliff notes version is that a guy who was kidnapped as a baby back in 1964 only to be returned to his parents about a year later, recently had a DNA test done that proves he's wasn't actually the kidnapped child. The cops had done their best with matching the shape of his ears, bless their hearts, but I guess without the scientific options we have today it was never going to be a 100% guarantee.
I suppose he must have had an inkling about it, if he went to the trouble of having the DNA tests done, but I'd imagine it still came as a bit of a shock. To find out you're not who you thought you were. That you're not the child your parents thought they'd lost, then miraculously regained.
It does make me wonder how I'd handle it if I found out that I'm not who I thought I was. Would I want to know who my parents really were, or would I decided that it didn't matter?
Still, that's not likely. I've got my grandmother's hair, my father's feet, and my mother's inherited arthritic condition. If it turned out I was actually a foundling dropped off on the doorstep one rainy night, that'd be one hell of a coincidence, don't you think?
