It was orientation and my daughter went to the rest room. In that time, two teachers approached, separately, one asking about my kids obvious avoidance issues. I explained their multiple diagnoses and at the end said, "And their father is pretty absent, but that's a good thing. Last time he had her he told her the sun was replaced by the government during the eclipse so, yeah, you're gonna have your hands full with this one." Basically repeated the same to the second teacher, except I tried to make it funny and said, "I am scared she'll get 'daddy issues' or something, but I prefer that to QAnon indoctrination."

I dunno, I feel like they should know. But in retrospect, I may have set my kid up for some... sigh, I just don't know.

I was telling a sort of work friend about the latest sun conspiracy and he laughed and said, "That's what dad are SUPPOSED to do!" And I looked at him with SUCH confusion. He explained, "Dad's have a knack for like, exaggeration and tall tales, it's just a way to teach your kid how to discern liars from good people kind of." I said, "OH!! I get what you're saying, but, no, no he and his wife really do believe that." He shook his head, "No, no there's no way. They must be messing with your kid or trying to mess with you, which IS messed up--" but I cut him off and told him about how when I used to try to placate/ go with the flow/ respect their anxiety and we all wrapped our electronics in foil, put them into the microwave, and drove to the out skirts of town while the national radio emergency broadcast went off last year.

The look on his face... how it changed from a laughing smile to a disbelieving grin to a questioning purse and then this like, hallow disconnect where I think he decided to just not believe people like that really exist... he ended the convo real fast.

I fucking hate my kid's dad so much 🙄 it's weird that the qanon shit is WHY he pushed my kid out of his life (mental health help/trans topics/ having no control over what happens at my house) (well also cause he's just a POS narcissistic wad of chewed up bubble gum you step in at the zoo - at the A BEGINING of the zoo...) yet his neglecting my kid is now sort of a benefit??! Sigh. It's confusing. I just don't need my kid being any more weird than she already is. She's cool weird. But tip it just a little too far with some whack ass and absurd conspiracy shit... junior high is already hard enough -_-

PS She believes them and I have to do a slow fix on this one since she basically blatantly told me not to argue with her because she'll take it as me being disrespectful to her father and step mother as well as herself. Basically I'm going to have to trinckle little random science facts throughout the next few weeks and she will put it together on her own... but then again, she's going to have a sliver of doubt about the authenticity of the sun for a while if not the rest of her life.