The Lighter Side of Chromosomes

Once upon a time (back in the summer of ’85), I took my five-year-old son Dixon to the local park. While he was playing in the sandbox, I sat on a nearby bench. Soon, a red-headed girl about his age sat next to him and started filling her bucket with sand.

Dixon got up and walked over to me, asking, “Papa, why is her hair red?”

I thought before answering: I don’t want to say her genes make her hair red because he might confuse “genes” with “jeans,” as in blue jeans. So I told him, “Her hair is red because…her chromosomes tell her hair to be red.”

Dixon – “What are chromosomes?”

Me – “Oh, those are the little things in you that tell you what you should look like.”

Dixon pulled up his shirt and examined his belly, “Where are the chromosomes?”

Me (laughing) – “Oh they’re too small for you to see, but there are a lot of them. That’s why they get to tell you how to look.”

After a while, we started walking home. As we passed a line of parked cars, Dixon called out their colors:

“This one is blue. This one is green. This one is red. [Pause] Papa, is this car red because of its…chrome?”

That was 25 years ago and I still smile when I think of it.

Steven Searle for US President in 2012

Founder of the Independent Contractors’ Party

“All children are sacred, even those we don’t see from our US plateau of plenty – like the ones languishing in refugee camps in the Middle East.”