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Being the sensitive guy he was, John tried<br />
to console me at the snack bar. He did this<br />
by letting me know, “You’ll be a real fox<br />
when you’re 18.” Then he winked.<br />
When you are 12 imagining your 18-year-old self, it requires thinking about more<br />
than just your face. You have to consider the whole package. This is when I decided<br />
I would be about 5’5”, because that’s what happens when you average my mom and<br />
dad’s height. That makes sense, right? Your offspring will be little blended cocktails<br />
of your genes in equal proportions that turn out to be amazingly perfect, balanced<br />
humans. Sadly, this is not the plan that genetics has in store for us.<br />
Instead of turning out 5’5”, I got my mom’s shortness gene. I could have just<br />
as easily been 5’10”. But no, nature doesn’t want to use my blending idea, and<br />
although my preteen self was concerned with how I would look, now I have real<br />
reasons to resent nature not being into mixing—because if it had, I could have<br />
been perfect. If you took my parents and put all of their traits in a blender and<br />
then made me, I would have been the best person ever.<br />
I would have my mom’s ability to be clever and witty and my dad’s penchant for<br />
being the life of the party. I would have a healthy dose of my mom’s paranoia,<br />
to keep me out of sticky or strange situations, and my dad’s ability to travel<br />
anywhere in the world and meet his new best friend. I would have my dad’s voice<br />
of wrath but my mom’s patience to dole it out only when necessary and with the<br />
utmost control. My mom’s smarts and my dad’s connections. My dad’s extreme<br />
cleanliness and my mom’s love of animals. I’d be hilarious but only have two<br />
drinks. I’d eat everything delicious but have the dedication to exercise.<br />
No, genetics doesn’t let you mix it up to give the best outcome. It takes all or<br />
nothing to make you a mini-Frankenstein replica of your parents. My idea is that<br />
the good and bad of each parent should mellow each other out. It’s a great idea,<br />
and if I were a genie I would make sure trait-blending happens like that from<br />
now on. When long strings of baby DNA are being coded, there would be some<br />
concessions made. It would no longer be the all-or-nothing scenario we have to<br />
deal with now. Why must the genetic lottery give us either our dad’s too-big nose<br />
or our mom’s too-small nose? Why can’t they be blended together to make the<br />
perfect-sized nose?<br />
Unfortunately, I am not the master of the universe, so for now nature will<br />
continue with its own plan. Sure, genetics gave me my dad’s love of travel and<br />
my mom’s inability to go beyond the front porch. Gave me one parent’s sweet<br />
tooth and the other’s diabetes. Gave me one parent’s sense of humor and the<br />
other’s horrible timing. It doesn’t seem fair. Luckily, your 12-year-old self does<br />
not know any of this. It just gazes lazily into the mirror, dreaming and wondering<br />
about the foxy future ahead.
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