Thursday, April 18, 2019

I Was Raised By My Genetic Parents

It was not obvious when I was a kid that this was true. My three siblings all looked comfortingly alike: Dark hair, in two cases it could fairly be called black, the other had chestnut colored hair. Mine was platinum blonde in pre-school and eventually darkened to a sandy brown later in life. They all had olive complexions and brown eyes, while I have pale green eyes and fair skin. It was noticeable enough that I was teased about being adopted. Which enraged me as a child, but now I could not say if I care or not.

I did a genetic test just for fun and I am related to people on both sides of my family in percentages consistent with my parents being, my parents.

All this thinking about genetics has made me notice just how unusual my dad was, from a phenotype standpoint:

He had red hair and freckles. Freckles often go with red hair, but the latter is still only about 6% of the northern and western parts of Europe.

He had brown eyes--most red-heads have blue or green eyes.

He was left-handed--not as rare as being a red-head, but less common than being right handed.

He was immune to being tickled. I can't easily find how rare this is but anecdotally, it may be the most rare thing in this list.

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