That Woman’s Nonsense

Today I got rid of some­thing that had been both­er­ing me for a while. The being for­mer­ly mar­ried to sam­bear made claims that two of our friends had wit­nessed or report­ed to her “ver­bal abuse and neglect” of Rowan and Genevieve and that those two peo­ple had told her that “they have con­tact with *oth­er* adults, who have gamed with you or attend­ed filk events, who have in turned expressed con­cern among each oth­er about the chil­dren’s liv­ing situation.”

We all know that this being isn’t a cred­i­ble source, but still—the thought that peo­ple who did vis­it our home fre­quent­ly, and whose chil­dren spent a lot of time at our house, might pos­si­bly think that we weren’t good par­ents did both­er me. I had giv­en myself time to cool down from my ini­tial anger over the accu­sa­tions, and today I con­tact­ed those peo­ple directly.

Both stat­ed that they’ve had very lit­tle con­tact with that being, and they cer­tain­ly nev­er expressed any such con­cerns or wit­nessed any abuse or neglect. They were not at all hap­py about her drag­ging their names into this. Appar­ent­ly, the very thought of us talk­ing to these peo­ple direct­ly did­n’t occur to her—and she cer­tain­ly did­n’t con­sid­er the effect of poi­son­ing those wells against any­thing she says in the future.

Now, hav­ing seen the words she was putting in their mouths, there are at least two more peo­ple in this world who know her for what she is. Hon­est­ly, that’s more than worth the brief unhap­pi­ness it caused.