My Genes Are Recessive But Rather Aggressive

My daughter recently gave birth to her second child. And unlike the first time, I am willing, uh, find it necessary, and resolved to admit that, yes, I am a grandfather. Three years ago, I was hesitant to use that term because I thought of grandfathers as retired, dithering coots who watch Matlock reruns and feed the squirrels at the park. Well, I am now retired, and I do feed squirrels, albeit at my house. So yes, I guess, I am the girl’s grandfather.

More importantly, I now have three years of experience as a grandfather, although I don’t allow the rugrat to use the G-word; he calls me “Pops”. And we get along great because he apparently got a large hit of my DNA.

My mother-in-law, the boy’s great-grandmother, loudly laments: "Grandchildren are supposed to be a mixture of everybody, but not this one! He's just all Donald Ake".  

Hey!  I can hear you! I’m standing right here.

However, I cannot dispute her observation. The kid looks like me, acts like me, and even laughs like me.

This doesn’t please me as much as you might think. There is a reason that God gave me two daughters and no sons. The universe does not need any more of my testosterone-fueled DNA running around. I was a terror as a child, and my wife was spared from having to raise one, let alone, two terrorists. To illustrate …

 

Two of my mom’s favorite stories about me:

One evening, soon after they put me in my crib for the night, I bounded into the front room. My parents were alarmed that somehow, at my young age, I had managed to scale the high crib wall and reach the floor without injury. They went to my room and feverishly worked for half an hour, securing the crib so I could not escape again. Mind you, my father was a mechanical genius, so at that point, the crib was deemed escape-proof, and I was put back to bed.

My parents returned to the living room, exhausted from the task. They had barely caught their breath when I casually reappeared. “Think you can keep me in that crib? – Here. Hold my bottle.” That was the last night I slept in that crib.

Story # 2 – I enjoyed escaping captivity and running wild. This caused significant problems for my mother anytime she took me out of the house. I would bolt away without warning. One time, we were at my grandparents' house, and she made sure all the doors were locked and secured. However, moments later, she looked out the front window and saw me running full speed across the street and down the alley. She had to run like mad to finally catch me, and she was not an athletic woman.

I was so uncontrollable my parents installed a chain lock on the outside of my door to keep me inside my room when I misbehaved. I remember hating to be locked in and screaming while pushing hard against the door.

 

Recessive Genes

It is odd that my grandson would mirror me so closely because I carry recessive genes. My family is made up of short people on both sides. My dad was 5'7"; somehow, I ended up almost 6’4”. Recessive genes should show up every hundred years or so, similar to me showing up to help out in the kitchen. My detractors, and even some of my friends, will tell you that it is a good thing my genes are recessive because we don't want many people like me on the loose.

 

A Brand New Start?                                                           

With the birth of the second child, a girl, there is renewed hope now. The family is joyously optimistic that she will inherit the outstanding traits of the rest of the family and that my genes will indeed be recessive and retreat to the outer limits of the universe, not showing up again until maybe 2084, when I will be long gone, and the damage to society is minimized.

They named her Avery. When I heard this name was under consideration, I lobbied very hard for her name to be Akery. I mean, c’mon man! It’s just one freakin’ letter different! Would that have been so difficult?

The hope is that Avery will be a normal, reserved, pleasant child, totally different, and better than her grandfather. So, here’s what we know about baby Avery so far:

-       -  People say she looks like her brother. But if her brother looks like me, then by logic …. Ah, let’s forget this one and try to find something more positive.

- She is a very long and skinny baby – a unique shape for a newborn. When my daughter said the phrase "long, skinny baby," it triggered something deep in my memory. I had heard that specific term repeatedly when I was a kid. Ah, yes, my mother spoke of this unusually long, skinny baby she had birthed – did I mention I’m an only child?

-       - She has huge hands – I can palm a basketball. 

-       - She has long, skinny feet. “Long, skinny feet” is another term I had not heard in decades. Again, I can remember my mother disparagingly using the term as we drove around the city searching for dress shoes in size 13 – narrow. We were lucky when we found the only store that sold them. (Akron/Canton peeps, can you find the pun in the previous sentence?)

Well, the family is so happy with baby Avery and optimistic about her future that I’m not going to darken the mood and reveal any of this. I’m hoping that the early indications are incorrect and she grows out of it or maybe gains more weight in her feet, or whatever. Furthermore, we hope her personality reflects everyone else in the family and is nothing like mine. Because no one deserves two children with my disposition. My parents didn’t even want that – that’s why they stopped at one.

It seems when it comes to grandchildren – my genes are recessive but very aggressive.

Smelly Solutions For A Stinky Problem

There it was once again—the pungent, thick, almost toxic cloud of cheap perfume. It penetrated my lungs, and for a split second, I thought I might faint. Surprisingly, the noxious odor was encountered in a spacious atrium of a basketball arena, which made me wonder if the cologne had been applied with a paintbrush. 

Stupid old lady, I thought. Yes, throughout your life, you consider your age to be the smartest age there is. People younger than you are obviously stupider because they have yet to gain the knowledge you have. People older than you are dumb because they do weird, irrational stuff that you would never think of doing.

Yes, you think that older people are weird until you reach that age and find yourself mysteriously adopting behaviors that you ridiculed ten years earlier. These "aha" moments occur all throughout our lives. Still, strangely, we don't learn from them and thus keep thinking that older people are peculiar.

My best personal example is how much I resented my mother seeking to interfere in my adult life. It didn't matter that I was a business professional with a graduate degree; she thought she knew the best course for me and would strongly voice her opinion on every decision I made.

After this happened, I would be enraged (but only internally). On the way home, I would think: WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH HER? I am an adult, fully capable of making my own decisions and figuring out what to do. Why would she think she has any right to interfere? 

I responded to these impositions by withholding information from her, only telling her what she really needed to know. Her intrusions only stopped after she suffered a heart attack and knew her life was winding down.

However, I am embarrassed to say that my desire to interfere in the lives of my two daughters actually exceeds that of my mother dealing with me. Of course, my daughters respond to this behavior by telling me virtually nothing when important stuff happens in their lives. I only find out the details months after the fact, and then I think:

Oh, if I would have known that was happening, I would have ….. And then I understand why I was kept in the dark – wise women they are. Of course, I blame my behavior on my mother – it's in my DNA, so I can’t help myself, even though I know it’s wrong.

Now, Back to the Pungent Old Lady

The encounter with the perfume cloud was still fresh in my mind, or still stuck in my nostrils, when I saw an Internet headline for what turned out to be a deeply disturbing article. The piece was about why older people stink. From here on, I will refer to this phenomenon as OPS (Old People Stink).

I had always thought that OPS was caused by poor hygiene habits combined with reduced olfactory sense. While this can be true, the article explained that primary OPS results from something else. Our body chemistry changes throughout our lifetime. When we are born, the chemistry is new and fresh, giving us that ‘sweet baby smell’. But after that, our scent deteriorates over our lifetime until we smell so bad that they bury us six feet underground or burn our bodies. The good news is that the change in body chemistry is only nasty once we reach our golden years, thus producing OPS.

But the bad news is horrible. As I read the article, I made a mental note that I will eventually need to shower more to wash off this OPS. But unfortunately, that won't help. Because the odor is not on your skin; it emanates from the chemistry within your body. If this were a hygiene horror movie, the heroine would scream, “IT’S COMING FROM INSIDE MY BODY. THE TERRIBLE ODOR IS INSIDE THE BODY!

OPS is further enhanced because senior citizens tend to be dormant and spend more time huddled up in their homes. The stench can be overwhelming when a group of golden-agers is stuck in one place, such as a nursing facility.

Therefore, our over-scented old woman is not stupid. She is an intelligent person who still has enough of her olfactory capacity to know she smells bad and is trying to mask it. You don’t have as many older men over-cologning because they don’t know they stink and thus don’t try to hide it.

However, dousing yourself in strong perfume is not a good solution to the problem. A guy on a local message board complained that his wife suffers from asthma attacks and migraines when exposed to women bathed in “old whore” perfume. Many people then commented about being sickened by “White Diamonds” and other fragrances over-applied by senior gals.

I can’t believe that our country just accepts OPS, and no one sees this as a real problem. Only one Japanese company is working on a solution that uses green tea to try to mask the emissions. There is a mountain of money to be made if some pharmaceutical comes up with a cure:

“I used to stink so badly that no one, not even my family, would visit me. But now I take Noreeka, and everybody wants to get close to grandma! And now the guys at the senior center all want hugs  – hubba, hubba! Ask your doctor if Noreeka is right for you.’

Somebody needs to do something soon because as the baby boomers enter into the high-stink years and live longer, we have not seen the peak of OTS. At some point there could be a giant OPS cloud terrorizing people across the country. I would hate for our body odor to destroy our nation:

“Today is day eight of the Old Person Stink alert. OPS levels are in the Red Zone – No one should leave their homes …..”