1. How convenient it is that each donor has a number! Watch me neatly slot the expensive little files into folders on my hard drive.
2. Since all the donors were once little boys, their most treasured childhood memories are of ritualized combat: football, food fights, fishing. "Favorite movie" is another problematic category, perhaps better omitted.
3. Why does the cryobank's website think PDF is a challenging format, one requiring two screens of warnings about download times and helper applications? Why must I click through three links to reach the files I want, even after I've paid (paid!) for access?
4. The two andrology techs I've met have been kind, sympathetic, patient people. I trust them. Perhaps the "staff impressions" are all we need to consider.
5. My husband is tall, highly educated, and has unusual hair. How dare you charge me extra to match him? Are we not entitled? I was hot enough for him!
6. Beaker turns back to his computer screen as I come in shuffling printouts. All he says, after reading: "What's a cleft chin?"
7. Noted: my mother and I have different eye colors, hair colors, skin tones, nose shapes, ear shapes, eyebrow arches, forehead heights, frame weights, and blood types. I have freckles; she does not. Yet we resemble each other strongly.
8. If I had enough faith in evolutionary psychology, I could just read these profiles like personal ads. 'Cause we only think people are hot if we want to have their babies, right? "Well, I'd never sleep with him." "The staff at the bank called this one 'hunky'—oooooh!"
9. The inkjet printer is low on colored ink, even though all but one of the baby pictures has been black-and-white.
10. Every man I see, I start cataloging: hair color, eye color, cheekbone height. And with each one I realize more strongly just how wild an array of people could be hiding behind any single profile.
11. Are all donors ENTJs? Why are their SAT scores so low? Does every donor with a Ph.D. also have a bipolar uncle?
12. Remember: regional accents are not genetically transmitted.
13. One donor's father has two brothers: a doctor and a bus driver. Remember: it's not all about the genes. Or all about the environment. We humans are pesky little buggers who will just turn out, well, the way we turn out, in the end.
ADDENDUM: If, God forbid, you're in the same boat as we are, be sure to check out this great "ask the geneticist" page. Upshot: inheritance of eye color and hair color is very complicated. Cleft chins and dimples too.
Number twelve made me laugh so hard! I needed that.
Posted by: Nels | Monday, October 04, 2004 at 09:21 PM