Am I on the Maury Povich Show?

That is how I felt when the DNA test results came back.

Imagine that you have been working with a young relative and you are trying to help her get her life in order. This relative sought you out to help her get back into school, find a job and move into an apartment. Imagine that she is dating a young horny teen who finished high school and is working and trying to go to college. He finds out that you are pregnant and he knows that he had sex with you so he accepts the fact that he is a going to be a father.

After the baby is born, he spends time with the baby and introduces the baby to his mom. His mother is excited (it’s her only child and first grandchild) and she wants to do the right thing so they agree to support the baby financially, emotionally, etc. One day you get into a fight with your boyfriend and you say “it’s not your baby anyway.” The teen is so angry. He believes you so he requests a DNA test. You are so big and bad you ask someone like me to take you to get the test and to child support. You assure me and everyone that he is the father. “I wasn’t with anyone else,” you say. Finally, you go to court and they make the teen pay for the test because he is working. He pays for the test without hesitation. The test comes back and it is 99.9 percent certain that you are not the father. I was upset with the girl but more upset with the fact that she had lied about being with only one person the whole time. Now she wants to take the second young man through the same thing. I don’t trust her. I told her to leave me out. Her daughter is beautiful. She would bring so much joy to her paternal family. But she’ll probably never know her father or his family because teenagers are not taking sex, pregnancy, or sexually transmitted diseases seriously.

But I’m listening to my daughter who simply said, “You need to stop trying to live everybody’s life. You can’t save everybody, so save yourself.” That’s going to be my new years’ resolution. I’m going to take inventory of my life and stop getting so upset because many of these teens are deciding to live their life the way they want too, not how I want them too.