I stated this to the dental assistant and she emphatically stated back that bad teeth were not hereditary. I've since looked it up and in fact, she's wrong. Genes for bad teeth can definitely be passed down.
Genetics account for a lot of things. Science acknowledges this, but I think a lot of people put blinders on. They want to believe that they are their own person, with their own destiny, unhindered by something they have absolutely no control of.
I've talked a little bit about my theory that I've inherited a genetic trait I call the hermit gene. In numerous cases throughout both my immediate family and going back for several Generations, on my father's side, I've noticed a tendency for many members of my family to prefer solitude. The Hermit qualities I exhibit are quite strong and represent pretty much the foundation of who I am. Oh, during certain phases of my life I've tried to work around this but this trait rears its head inevitably throughout every decade culminating and its pinnacle to this day of virtually total isolation.
Another notable genetic trait that I can clearly see in my family is the obvious ancestry tying us to, I would guess, Genghis Khan. When I did my ancestry.com DNA test a few years ago, I thought for sure that I would find that our family had been influenced by Native American predecessors, but the test proved that that wasn't the case. The test showed overwhelming Western European influence, mainly France, but also quite a bit of Eastern European and Russian genetics. Again not a surprise as I know very well my mother's father was Polish. But here's the thing, I think quite a bit of this could be attributed to the incursions of Genghis Khan on Eastern Europe in the 13th century and this may have affected not only my genetic ancestry inherited from my mother, but my father as well.
Ever since she was a baby in the early 1970s, I noticed right away that my cousin Monique, my aunt Leona's daughter (my father's sister) looked a little different. I don't know if as a kid I mention this to any adults but I thought she looked Asian. Fast forward some four decades and take a look at my nephew, Russell's son Kyle. If he isn't the spinning image of Genghis Khan I don't know who is.
