It's In The Genes, and Jeans

So D1 signed us up for Ancestry.Com's DNA testing -- you get a neat kit, spit in a vial, and they tell you about your ehtnicity and race, according to your DNA. My results were the first to come back, appropriately, on the most holy of Jewish Holidays, as I'm, like, totally Jew. When I was in third grade, or maybe fourth, we read about African tribes -- the Masai and Pygmies. The Pygmies were tiny, of course, but the Masai grew to nearly NBA Center sixe, and drank cow's blood for strength. They'd just cut the cow's neck and drain some blood -- without killing the animal. I always thought this was the coolest thing -- after they'd drink the blood, they'd go hunt lions. My people, Ashkenazi Jews who were third and fourth generation Americans, only hunted bargains and good corned beef sandwiches. To use the great joke, the true meaning of a Bar Mitzvah for a Jewish boy is the realization, by age 13, that he's far more likely to someday own a NBA team than play for one. So I hoped maybe somewhere I had some Masai in me. It could have happened! Jews traveled all over in ancient times, and maybe one of my great-great-greats impregnated a Masai woman, and brought the baby back to Bialystok with him... Nah! It wasn't to be. My DNA is solidly Ashkenazi -- with traces of Italian and Greek. Clearly this accounts for my nearly inborn love of Italian food, and to a lesser degree, Greek. But I also love Chinese, and there ain't none of that in my genes, apparently. A few years back, a dermatologist told Wifey that she had "Sephardic skin." The doc, who I'll call Michael, since that's his name, is a garden variety Ashkenazi, like us, but likes to dabble in genealogy as well, at least as he observes dermises (dermi?). So now Wifey is convinced she's more exotic than I am, genetic-wise, though her parents are straight out of the Polish-Jewish comic books...We'll see, soon enough. Also, D2's results will be in soon. D1 didn't partake -- she assumed her DNA and her sister's would be the same, so why spend more money. Of course, I know one can never assume these things. I once read a study on cuckholdry -- the name for situations where the child's Daddy ain't his Daddy but his Daddy don't know, to quote a great Reggae song. In middle class America, the rate is apparently like 7%. So I like to smile when I see pictures of, say, three classes at my Ds' Elementary School -- 100 kids, 7 aren't who they think they are. So if D2's DNA comes back and she's partly Masai, well, Wifey will have some 'splainin' to do. Many of us American Jews, still yearning for assimilation, want to be "not too Jewish." It's why Jackie Mason is beloved by so many, but lots of Reform Jews find he makes them uncomfortable -- he talks like their grandparents on the Lower East Side. I used to have some of these feelings, too, but any remaining ones left when I moved to Miami. See -- Latin chicks think Jewish guys are Da Bomb! We're seen as good providers, who treat our women like queens. When a working class Miami Latina scores a Jewish husband, it's like she won a major prize. So I rep my Ashkenazi genes! Plus, it's nice to know that Mom, may she rest in peace, didn't step out on Dad, may he rest in peace, back in 1960, when I was conceived. Or if she did, it wasn't with anyone from Asia or Africa...