I’ve always said, it’s a shame lutefisk is only served during the holiday season. Oh wait. I never said that, and I never will.
But if I did feel that way, I’d have good reason for it. It’s in my DNA. I recently took a DNA test and was shocked to discover that a full 10 percent of mine is Scandinavian. My family had previously been unaware we had any Scandinavian in our history. Fortunately, I’ve always been fond of Scandinavians, particularly the full-blooded one I’m married to.
On the other hand, I was disappointed to find my dab of Irish was much smaller than I thought, apparently having been crowded out by marauding Vikings. I won’t be trading in my corned beef for lutefisk anytime soon though. I love corned beef, and you can get it on sale this time of year. I don’t think that’s the case with lutefisk, but it wouldn’t matter if it was.
I know that listening to a non-relative talk about their family history is like having them show you their home movies while they pull your teeth out. I like you too much to do that to you, so that’s all I’m going to say about it. But, I am going to encourage you to take the test yourself. You don’t have to study. All I had to do to pass my test was spit into a tiny tube. Some DNA tests require a cheek swab, but you don’t have to study for those either.
TV crime lab people can track down a killer using DNA taken from a piece of chewed-up bubble gum they find in a mud puddle at the crime scene. It will take more sample than that, but not much. I’ve seen people spit more on the sidewalk. (If you’re one of those people, stop it. That really bothers me.)
After collecting your sample, you shake it up to mix it with the stabilizing solution, seal it, and send it off to the lab. I’ll pause here to express my respect for the fine lab techs who do this important and painstaking work. I, for one, am in awe that they can look at "samples" all day and still eat lunch.
After a month or two, you’ll get a report outlining your ethnic mix and linking you to any distant relatives who have also taken the test. There may be a few surprises in your DNA mix, as there were for me. That’s because people long ago did not let a lack of U-Haul and airline service keep them from migrating all over the place and starting families wherever they went.
You may also be surprised to find that the DNA you share with your siblings may not be as similar as you’d think. You get 50 percent of yours from your father and 50 percent from your mother. So do your siblings. It’s just not the same 50 percent. There’s one more thing to fight about.
One Stanford University researcher I found on the Internet said it’s like having two bags of 50,000 different colored marbles. You take 25,000 out of each bag, combine them and record the results. Then you return them to the bags and take out another 25,000 from each one for the next sibling. Naturally, you’re bound to get two different sets. This explains why siblings can be so different, and why some of yours seem to have lost their marbles.
Put another way, it’s like you each got a ladle of soup, but yours has more noodles. Or you each got a scoop of trail mix, but theirs has more nuts. And that helps explain why some of my Scandinavian relatives eat lutefisk.
"Around the Bend" appears regularly in the Advocate and about 25 newspapers in the Midwest, including the Rapid City Journal. Rosby, Rapid City, S.D., lives with her husband and college-age son. Her book "I Used to Think I Was Not That Bad and Then I Got to Know Me Better" is available at the Advocate. For more on Rosby, visit www.dorothyrosby.com.