2002-01-09 - 10:24 p.m.

My mother-in-law thinks her phone is being tapped by her soon-to-be ex daughter in law. There is a contentious divorce (are there any kind?) and the gloves have come off. The child has not been returned at the allotted time to his father. His mother has enrolled him in a school in a different state where the child will end up living. But, ther might be legal action.

My brother-in-law, Jonathan, is married to a Philippino woman. There are stories that her uncle was an important person in the government(and possibly a cartel). Who knows? Perhaps that is true, but he is dead now.

So, the other day, my mother-in-law gets off of the phone with her mother and she gets a recording that says something like "this call has been traced". She was very concerned. My husband pointed out that wire tappers aren't polite enough to inform you of their intrusion. Nevertheless, she was worried. What could Corene's family possibly find out? That my mother-in-law is "less than happy" with Corene? That she hopes her son prevails in this divorce? Or, how is the weather in St. Augustine? John thinks she actually hit *69 by mistake.

The other issue with this divorce is that my brother-in-law is abondoning his child. Despite all of his acclamations that he wanted custody of his child, his child was the most important thing to him, he has decided to "fly in" to see his son 8 times a month. David had reminded him earlier, that father only saw him on weekends and he resented it.

It's odd to watch other people raise children. The parents do the same things they hated their parents for. Aren't we, as a human race, intelligent enough by now to evaluate our childhoods as well as our children's? It seems that parents forget what it was like to be young as soon as the baby seat is positioned in the back seat of the SUV.

Of course, I have seen children worse off than this. I've lived and worked around poverty. William will still have a better education and life compared to the lower stratum of our society. Despite income levels, it seems to me that every parent inflicts the same harm on their children that was done to them.

But, back to the wire tapping. Think for a moment about who could possibly wire tap you and what they would hear. Is our lives that boring?!