A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 11
You know that whole thing on the Web where people show two photos of celebrity types, noting similarities in appearance under the heading “Switched At Birth?” Well, this story literally is switched at birth:
SAO PAULO — Two years back, Dimas Aliprandi and Elton Plaster didn’t know of each other’s existence. Then they learned they had been accidentally switched at birth more than 20 years ago.
The discovery didn’t bring bitterness or recrimination. Rather, it led to the creation of a bigger family.
Today, the two 25-year-olds are living and working together with both sets of parents growing vegetables and coffee on a small farm in southeastern Brazil.
The chain of events started with Aliprandi, who was always intrigued that he did not resemble the four sisters he grew up with.
“There was something different,” he told The Associated Press by phone. “I had blonde hair and blue eyes and my sisters had dark hair and eyes.
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“In December 2008, when I was 24, I decided I needed an answer to my doubts and paid 300 reals ($166) for a DNA test that confirmed my suspicions that I was not the birth son of the man and woman who had raised me,” he said.
It was a big shock for his parents, Zilda and Antonio Aliprandi. They at first refused to believe the results, but eventually decided to help him look for his biological parents.
The search began at the Madre Regina Protmann Hospital, where he was born.
“I showed the hospital the results of the DNA test and told them that they proved that I had been switched at birth,” Aliprandi said.
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He said the hospital then searched its records and found Elton Plaster was born there on the same day.
The records led Aliprandi to the 35-acre (14-hectare) farm where Plaster lived with his parents, Nilza and Adelson, in the town of Santa Maria de Jetiba, about 30 miles (45 kilometers) from the Aliprandi home in Joao Neiva.
The Plasters agreed to do DNA tests.
“They discovered that Elton was the biological son of the man and woman that I had been calling Mom and Dad for 24 years,” Aliprandi said. “Meanwhile, Elton discovered that the couple he had always regarded as his biological parents were mine.”
So where does this story go? In real life, both families ‘share’ the sons. Straight drama? Could be a drama-comedy as the two families could be considerably different, thus creating a dual FOOW (Fish-Out-Of-Water) dynamic. Maybe a thriller as with the discovery one brother’s circumstance improves considerably while the other’s plummets.
In any event, a mind-boggling setup. What would you do with it?