Cruel Internet-tions

Would anyone from the past ever believe or conceive that a child could be lost due to a computer crime?

I recently read about the mother who lost her 13-year old daughter to suicide. The little girl was told “the world would be better off without her” by what she believed to be a 16-year old boy. Turned out this “boy” was actually a forty-nine year old woman impersonating a 16-year old in an attempt to find out what the deceased girl was saying about her own daughter after a disagreement.

If you were like me, after reading this blurb on the internet, you said to yourself, “WHAT???” You were wondering exactly how a 16-year old was able to dive so deep into the mind of this 13-year old, that she could be convinced that her life was not valuable. You were wondering where on earth, were her parents when she must have spent hours on the internet - unsupervised building this type of relationship.

And then you wondered how the older woman, who obviously has a family of her own, found that much time and energy to devote into developing a relationship with the little girl instead of spending that time encouraging her own daughter to pay no mind to people who talk behind her back. Time would have been better spent on getting her own daughter to build a self-esteem so strong and so tough that no peer would ever be able to tear it down with something as trivial as he-say, she-say.

If you are like me, your heart is breaking for the little girl’s mother who will never have the opportunity to help her daughter pick out her prom or wedding dress. And even though I ask these questions of the young lady’s mom by no means am I passing judgement. I’m simply a mother asking why.

We shake our heads back and forth because it’s the world we live in, but we should be getting angry - angry enough to at least say out loud with tears in our eyes, “this is a bunch of bull$*&@#!” Who is accountable? This may not be your child, but these events are coming closer and closer to home. Your teen may not be disturbed, but he/she may be attending school with a disturbed teenager. One who might decide he/she wants to blow up the school, maybe even start firing off a gun into the lunchroom crowd. I mean – if I had to, could I explain the older woman’s actions to someone watching from the outside? The steps she took? The malicious plotting and planning every day – it’s horrifying…It’s difficult for me to understand because she has a daughter of her very own.

What lengths would you go to defend your child? How far would you go for revenge if someone hurt your child’s feelings? It’s difficult to say the least, to see your own baby hurting. My mind goes back in time to the movie, HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE when the antagonist marches up to the schoolyard, grips the arm of the bully who’d been taunting the little girl she was caring for, and threatens to kill him if he touched her again. I sometimes joke that if anyone messed with my baby and the teacher was sloppy in handling the matter, that I would be that woman marching to the schoolyard. I’m joking of course, but what do you think about when you see those bad kids in the grocery store? You know the ones – throwing fits, hitting and kicking their mothers, sticking their tongues out at other shoppers and flipping off the cashiers? Or do you even see much of that type of behavior these days since drugs have been introduced to children to calm them down? Okay, let’s back up because I’m now way off the main subject.

If you are like me you’re wondering about that 49-year old woman trying to save her daughter from cruel gossip, but ironically gave her enemies something far more vicious to discuss behind her daughter's back. You're hoping she will be strong enough to survive it, but I don’t know... Karma is a MOTHER. Just sharing some thoughts about what happened the other day and what could happen tomorrow - to any one of us. Peace.