Monday, October 23, 2006

when the rubber hits the road, you have different ideas

The above being a verbatim quote from a phone conversation this evening with a old friend of mine. Back in the day, she could be relied upon to take the unyielding radical environmentalist position whenever someone would talk about the possible importance of genetics for the determination of something.

Now, she's in the position of choosing an anonymous donor to father her baby. She has spent a few thousand hours poring over the profiles of different prospects. In the end, she decided to shell out extra so she can get the sperm of someone who is "in a professional school."

"What kind of professional school?"
"Pharmacy."
"Pharmacy? Pharmacy school counts for a sperm price premium?"
"Darling, pharmacy school is more difficult than anything you've ever done."

The other thing that was a big selling point for the donor was this photo of him from when he was a child. She e-mailed it to me; he is a cute kid, in a shifty, precocious-sociopath sort of way. He's standing at this toy lectern with an apple on it and this fake-o painted background of books behind him. Poseur. I'm presuming that when his mother took him to K-Mart to get it taken, she had little idea of how consequential that day was to her evolutionary fitness.

"I think you should pick someone with blue eyes."
"You think I should make it a sure thing I get someone with blue eyes."
"I think this guy doesn't look likely to have a blue-eyed recessive gene in him, so it's not far from a sure thing for brown eyes."
"You advocate for the propagation of blue eyes."
"Natural blue eyes are on their way to extinction. I just think so long as you are picking daddy out of a database, you could do your part to postpone the inevitable."

11 comments:

nina said...

So if one of your motherhood-inclined female friends, one who was really really anxious to have a child and one who valued sociology almost as much as pharmacy, asked you to, you know, donate, would you? Would you charge her a premium (because it's sociology)? Just curious.

Ang said...

My Ex is a pharmacist. I used to help him study. The dissertation is harder.

Lucy said...

Pharmacy is only an undergrad degree at home (as are the other professional ones).

Is there more evidence for blue eyes going extinct than for blonde hair?

jeremy said...

Nina: I'll pass on publicly answering that question.

A+: Did your Ex have brown hair, brown eyes, and sort of look like an proto-arsonist when he was a boy?

Lucy: I think (naturally) blue eyes and blonde hair are both dicey propositions over the long haul, barring a bleugenics movement.

tina said...

***bleugenics movement!*** omg! that is hysterical!

dorotha said...

i'd go anonymous and luck of the draw, or maybe screen 'em for epilepsy, just in case. if i had to pick them based on profession, i'd steer away from academics lest their is a genetic predisposition for being an ass.

Anonymous said...

Intriguing content aside, I am struck by the linguistic strategy of addressing one with a term of endearment ("darling") followed by a put down of some sort (however benign). I do this, too, and often not consciously. Though, I do it consistently enough that one observant (ex)boyfriend used to raise an eyebrow and/or look askance at me whenever I began a sentence "darling..." At least he didn't cringe, but still...
Is this a common pattern of speech? And do men use it also?

dorotha said...

i've heard men use "honey" in this way, but only when talking to women.

Anonymous said...

Your friend would do well to pick Polish: you get the looks, the brains, the soul, the fun etc. etc.

Anonymous said...

Choose Polish and get it all.

Ang said...

Jeremy: He does have blue eyes, though he's more blond than brown. And when he was a kid, he looked like a jerk, which he was and continues to be.