Grok Say 'Uff Da'

Hans and Petra Skari

I went ahead and sent my spit to a DNA company, because I feel there is such a thing as too much privacy, and also because I was curious about my genetic heritage. Lots of you have done the same thing, including some 589 close relatives of mine, which is extraordinary, inasmuch as I thought my family tree had been reduced to a stump with a few of us suckers coming out of it. (I haven't paid the extra to be introduced to these people, because of the risk they'd be a lot like me.)

I generally describe myself as half Norwegian. Americans like to do that. We have only the single citizenship and no familiarity with other languages or cultures or anything but you ask any of your basic paler Americans what they "are" and they'll start ticking countries off their fingers. We're real proud of our immigrant heritage as long as it has at least a few decades of antiquity to it. So I say I'm half Norwegian because my mom's parents were both from the old country and it was assumed their parents were too, and so on and so forth. I describe the other half as a dull mixture of pasty peoples in the English realm, but don't get too specific. I figure they're all interchangeable anyway.

But I was surprised to discover that I actually am 43.7% Norwegian. Surprised, because this DNA business goes back a long way and it seems to me people should have moved around a bit more than that, or, in the case of the Vikings, conquered more people than that, and so I would have expected my DNA to reflect inferior vanquished overrun peoples' DNA. Your Russian, your French, Spanish, Welsh, Irish, Greek, Italian, maybe even some Mi'kmaq from Newfoundland. Could I possibly have come from Viking stock? Oh looky there! I'm 0.4% Northern African! The Vikings conquered Morocco in 845. Boo-yah!

So I am quite tickled about the results,  because mild-mannered folk like myself like to imagine we harbor an inner Viking. Robust! Hearty! Swinging a broadsword through a cranium like it was butter! In fact--if we are what we eat--buttery! And that includes us womenfolk, with our fat blond braids tucked into our belts alongside our battle axes, ready to bash people over the head with our krumkake irons. Uff da!

All I've got to threaten people with is writing them into my novels.

Anyway, sure enough, the rest of the story was mixed and pasty. Until we get to the good stuff. The stuff I was most interested in.

Yes, folks, read it and weep. I have way more Neanderthal in me than most of you. Nearly 4%. The reconstructions of Neanderthal skeletons are not as dreadful-looking as most people imagine, I'll have you know. The Neanderthal is short and stocky and has thicker, denser facial bones than their skinny-ass compatriots in the H. sapiens school. I can relate. I am short and--oh, let's substitute "sturdy" for "stocky," why don't we--and I have empirical evidence that my head is not fragile, because I keep falling on it, and nothing has spilled out. Between my inner Vikings and Neanderthals I'm pretty sure I could keep my smug inner Irish and English portions in line. I like to think they didn't contribute much to the wonder that is me.

Maybe just the eyebrows.

The Dust-Mite-Laden Arms Of Morpheus

I found a helpful article in the paper the other day on how to pull together the perfect bedroom look, and I devoured it, looking for the answer to the biggest mystery: why shams? They didn't say. What struck me instead was the categorical statement that you should replace your pillows every one or two years. There was some kind of reason. Your pillow molecules will mutiny, assemble a dust-mite cavalry, and take you down in the middle of the night, or something. Immediately this struck me as the sort of science that comes straight from the marketing department. Like "lather, rinse, repeat." Or the received wisdom that a diamond engagement ring should set you back two months' pay. Or the latest from Taco Bell: Fourth Meal. (This last legitimizes the enormous fat-and-salt porkathon you scarf down at two in the morning to soak up some of the alcohol, and just in time, too, because people were in danger of starting to worry about diabetes.)

Well, Dave and I haven't replaced our pillows for as long as we've known each other, at least--36 years. And neither one of us wants to replace our pillow, which is absurd, because he totally should.

His pillow is the skinned and flayed remainder of its former self, just a pillow gut pile with the ticking long gone. It is a gray, dingy remnant of folded-over batting whose only dignity is conferred upon it by the pillowcase that holds it together. Mine, on the other hand, still has its entire outer cover, if not all its original innards.

Dave is a man of great courage and loyalty who would stop a bullet with his forehead to save a friend. However, his sense of loyalty is not limited to those with the customary supply of consciousness. He befriends inanimate objects all the time. Pieces of fluff, rocks that look like they have noses, and wind-up Fred Flintstones, every one becomes his "little buddy." In all likelihood he looks at his disreputable rag of a pillow and sees a congregation of dust bunnies, arms linked, little buddies in formation, and would no more discard it (or them) than he would kick Pootie (#1 Little Buddy) to the curb for being a Lakers fan. Ditching his pillow would not be an act of hygiene: it would be a betrayal.

If my pillow is not my original childhood pillow, it has to be close. It is a thin squashable scrap of ticking half-filled with Archaeopteryx feathers and every night I mold it into a popcorn-shaped sculpture designed to keep my face nearly straight down while allowing a little breathing passageway. I am a stomach sleeper.

I cannot fall asleep on my back. Sometimes that's where I end up, and I can tell because I'm occasionally in that position when I wake up due to some horrible racket that always quits just when I come to. It is possible for me to fall asleep on my side, but it is too dispiriting to watch my belly set sail for distant shores across the mattress and my boobs pool out like a short stack of pancakes. So most of the time I fall asleep face down. I've been doing this since I was wee. Probably my parents put me in the crib that way hoping it might save them college expenses one day. I know for a fact that I wasn't in their original plan.

But my scrawny little pillow doesn't make my bed look good. It makes my be look like Brigitte Bardot's bustier on a six-year-old. What makes a bed look good, according to reliable sources that sell such things, is a mountain of pillows adorned with cases and shams in coordinating colors, textures, and patterns, including stripes, plaids, and florals, but nothing too matchy-matchy. In other words, the look that sends me into despair when I see it in my motel room. I have to evict all but one pillow and then find a corner of it and wheedle it into a little one-inch nose prop while the rest of the pillow floats above my head like a thought balloon.

But the secret that lies inside my laundered pillowcase is a lifetime of skin cells, drool, and other DNA. If I found it on the "free" table in a garage sale, I'd be horrified. But it's all mine. I've got almost sixty years of personal bacteria in there. My little buddies. I can't abandon them now.

Oops! Totally Did Not Mean For That To Happen.

My Dad, unmodified

Californians are considering a proposition to require genetically modified foods to be labeled. Such a label might read "Warning: Contains Genetically Modified Organisms." Monsanto, the world's largest GMO producer, is agin it. The corporation believes this will have an adverse effect on sales. And it probably will, at least more so than if the label read "Boy Howdy! Genetically Modified Organisms."

Critics of the proposition believe the labels might lead consumers to reject GMO products without having any understanding of their environmental and economic benefits. There is something to this. People might indeed veer away from the stuff even if it is completely safe. It is true that many people react viscerally rather than investigating. For instance, I automatically, without further review, discount any proposition made by a Republican, but it does not follow that all Republicans are unworthy of support. No. They are unworthy of support because they are short-sighted, profligate, womb-invading planet pirates with cash-encrusted pockets the size of entire countries.

So what is genetic engineering? It is the deliberate manipulation of a living genome by the insertion or deletion of a gene. Deletions are dicey: the sucker is still in the hard drive somewhere and ignorance of this fact will dog you all the way to divorce court. But usually genes are inserted instead, and usually across species. Most often a bacterial gene is inserted into plant DNA, but it could totally be a squid or something. The gene can be inserted by attaching it to a virus and sending it on what amounts to a guerrilla mission, or tiny little particles can be fired into their targets with something called a "gene gun."

This process has resulted in plants that grow their own insecticides or are impervious to our own herbicides, or--in a breakthrough for the fossil-fuel industry--tomatoes that remain sullen and leathery and can be transported over huge distances until they arrive at their destination markets to "ripen," which is the industry term for turning reddish.

Animals too have had their genomes twiddled with. Using a "gene howitzer," a goat has been engineered to produce incredibly strong spider silk in her milk, which is suitable for body armor and other military uses; pigs have been grown that glow green in the dark.

Ask anyone who has ever suffered that common nightmare about the roving band of bullet-proof goats wearing night-vision hoggles: this has the law of unintended consequences written all over it. It should sound familiar. Settlers in Australia thought they were bringing in a tasty touch of home with their rabbits, and now the entire country's topsoil has been replaced by bunny fur. We're no good at this.

It isn't that we can't aspire to greatness. If the gene that persuades songbird chicks to poop in their own little transportable baggies could be shot into urban dogs, the world would be a better place. Likewise might we be better off if the pig-snout development gene could be inserted into mosquitoes so that they grow blunt proboscises, and are forced to queue up at the Red Cross for charity blood boxes. But things get away from us. The concentration of logy mosquitoes might then lead to localized populations of rotund chickadees that can barely get off the ground and threaten the eyesight of small urban dogs. The birdhouse industry will falter during a retooling phase and new markets will spring up to produce designer chickadee deflectors for pugs. It's hard to predict, or control.

If you look around at nature, you'll find that everything is pretty much the way it's supposed to be. That's not so much because any particular deity wants it this way. It's that if it were supposed to be another way, it would be. Which is not to say things remain static. Stuff happens. Little stuff, big stuff. Lightning strikes a tree and creates new housing opportunities. Rocks fall out of the sky and all the dinosaurs pack it in. Life is opportunistic. If you pull a peg out of the wall, something's going to happen. Either something will burrow into the hole and lay eggs, or the wall will come down on top of you.

So without doing a lot of research, I am on the distrustful side of the genetic engineering development. We've done nothing but tinker since we crept out of the gorge and danced on the savannah. And I don't think our record of so-called mastery is very good.

But I am excited about the possible introduction this year of a fast-growing salmon. Throw in a baguette the size of a missile and Jesus will be on board with it, too. I know just where they'll put it. Right off the Pacific into the mighty Columbia, which I can see from my house. Any lesser river and the poor bugger will scrape his sides on the banks.

The Slow Twitch

They've got this genetic test they can do now so you can find out if your child is likely to excel in athletics. This test is particularly useful if your own observational skills are meager. They look for some kind of gene marker for speed and springiness. You can swab the inside of your child's cheek and send in the DNA to the testing lab and for $160 they'll let you know if he's got potential for zip and is just being lazy, or if you should plan to spend the next eighteen years rolling him over on the sofa to prevent sores.

I suppose this kind of information helps parents with their day-to-day child micromanagement. With one tissue-culture they can find out if they should be pushing the soccer drills and saving up for a genuine Rumanian coach, or just buy the kid a clarinet and hope for something better next time.

My parents would have had it easy collecting my DNA, because I move slow and drool. But it would have been a giant waste of time. Testing me for athletic prowess would be like thumping a bowling ball for ripeness. I've never had any skills. If I were ever to excel in an Olympics, it would have to be a special one just for me, featuring trudge-scotch, stationary jumprope, tether-feather, and Red Light Red Light. One thing that was probably a plus for my mother was that she only needed to check on my whereabouts every half hour or so, because I couldn't have gotten far.

It was awful in grade school. Every day at recess the two kids who usually got to be captains chose their teams, and it always got down to me and the kid with flippers. I didn't feel bad for myself. I had no part of my self-worth tied up in sports ability, but I felt sorry for the captains. I wouldn't have picked me either. They'd stand there, shifting their weight from foot to foot, all anguished, and finally one would say "oh, I guess I'll take him," and the flippered kid would hitch on over, and the remaining captain would close his eyes in resignation.

I was exciting to watch in softball games, although it put the coach on edge. If I was on second base, there was always the possibility the batter would lap me before I made it home, and technically you're not supposed to score the fourth run before the third. I read an article about the genetic differences between good athletes and us more torpid specimens, and took some comfort in it. It turns out that muscles are made up of slow-twitch and fast-twitch fibers. "So the sprinters naturally have a greater proportion of quick-twitch muscle strands," I read to Dave. He looked at me and said, eschewing the minced word, "you don't have any of those."

He has plenty. He runs bases like he's an electron, and it's a good thing, too, because the boy has a mouth on him. I, on the other hand, have had to develop my powers of ingratiation. Pokiness helps hone a sense of humor. You might be just as mean and opinionated as the next guy, but if you can manage to be adorable about it, people let you get away with stuff.

So I can't see my parents shelling out for a genetic test for athletic ability. I can see them watching me execute a crumpled cartwheel or throwing a ball at my own feet and thinking: maybe she can draw.