So my older (like way older) brother Martin, calls me up to say that he sent a DNA sample swab away for testing and he knows for certain that 'our' father Jack, was really NOT his father. Now that piece of 67 year old news has many, many heavy family consequences OR would have if it were not for the following facts:
- Father Jack was a terrible example as a parent. He abandon our Mom with 3 small kids, never paid child support, although he did always make a good living as a Jeweler. All of us are doting parents and kinda feel sorry for the guy - now that he's dead anyway.
- We have all lived much of our lives successfully, to one degree or another, with adult children of our own who share that success, to one degree or another, and all doing pretty well.
- Our poor Mom is kinda played out in a nursing home with many of her facilities gone and she clings to dear life without really being aware of it. News of her supposed youthful 'infidelities' would not send her into any sort of indignation, as life has already handed her much more serious indignities to cope with.
- My 'baby' sister Sue (two year's younger) and I look a lot like our father Jack, so we saved on DBA swabs and postage. Ancestry genetics just don't hold the fascination they do for our older brother. (What difference does it make if you gotta make the best of what you got?) And besides, we can't stop howling long enough to do anything. After all these years, to find out it really WAS the milkman (as my brother now believes) well, there are no words to describe it.
But the consequences of this are exceedingly grave indeed, as brother Martin points out. Something about tracing your roots back to pre-historic man and Neanderthal like characteristics. Well clearly, my big brother always did have the jump on me intellectually (I was more the brutish type) and now I know why.
There are lots more consequences that can be read into this with more research*and I'm sure the analysis is of some limited historic value. I don't see it, but gauging from the growth of the genetic information industry, I'm in a minority.
What fascinates me about the whole business is the potential material this creates for movie script, stand up comedy and 'reality' TV is enormous. Like playing back a particularly lurid episode from the Jerry Springer Show only you're in the guest seat - kinda after the fact. (In our case it would be more like the Morey Povich Show, 'cause after all, Morey IS from South Philly.) I've got to find me a video camera that captures the past before I can catch that episode!
*But while the proportion of one’s inheritance from parents is fixed by exact necessity, the fraction from grandparents is governed by chance. For each of the chromosomes you inherit from a given parent, you have a 50 percent chance of gaining a copy from your grandfather and a 50 percent chance of gaining a copy from your grandmother.
