ACHOO!

Bless you! No, I meant ACHOO (Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helioopthalmic Outburst). That's a thing? Apparently yes and I only know this because I have been scouring through journals and research on observable human characteristics vs. all things that you could inherit through your genealogy, and it's quite the list. There's some pretty interesting stuff on there, but none of what I was specifically crossing my fingers for. So why was I scouring through what surely cannot be considered light bedtime reading you might ask? Well, it's simple, two reasons-I hate being wrong and I love to argue my point. On this particular occasion though, in trying to prove my argument, I discovered that I was full of (insert expletive of your choice).

This whole thing started with a dinner invitation. The boyfriend and I along with a couple friend of ours decided to have dinner on a school night. No, none of us has kids. For us, a school night is the kind of night where everyone's got somewhere to be early next morning and no one wants to be out late- but this was the only night that kinda sorta worked for everyone involved so we locked in the date and time. The location also has to be considered carefully because we live on opposite ends of a very crowded city, but we managed that as well. Super, all that needs to be done now, is get there on time!

Why is this a thing? It's a thing because I am African, my boyfriend is Indian and so is the other couple we are going off to meet. This combined gene pool more often than not equals lateness. Dinner was slated for 8:00 pm but we sent messages back and forth with statements like, "ok we can make it there between 8:15 and 8:30", and " we'll be there before 8:45 for sure" it's never just "ok we'll be there at 8.00!".

Long story short, we lived up to the expectations of both our cultures. I had a whole two hours to myself to get ready for departure. I however found that to be the appropriate time to get on the IKEA website to order some "very important things". In my defense, they just opened in our city, I am still excited! The boyfriend over there, in keeping with solidarity in this relationship, chose his own form of distraction poison, suffice it to say we end up all being about 25 minutes late to dinner. But we made it within the reservation window…right?!

So this got me thinking about statements we use quite often back home to explain tardiness…it's African time or the running joke my boyfriend and I have on Indian Standard Time(IST) meaning that plus 30-45 minutes buffer. Are some cultures genetically predisposed to being late? Not that I honestly believed this was a thing, however when something is said often enough…..well…you know…blurred lines!

Anyhow so back to my research. Turns out, there's a myriad of quirky things you can inherit through your lineage such as; a bizarre habit of sneezing at the sun or ACHOO (Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helioopthalmic Outburst), a love of hatred for exercise, how one reacts to caffeine, infidelity and even poor driving skills. So the next time you see a bright light and sneeze or find yourself having to explain your inclination to being a couch potato to your gym obsessed buddy know that there's some science lurking somewhere to back up your argument.

Tardiness, unfortunately for us, did not make this list. Do we need to do better? Yes, we do. The night ended with a vow to be not more than 15 minutes late next time…hey, c'mon baby steps :-).