My Genetic Inheritance

I look just like my mother. I don't exactly have her coloring, but I have her face. Sometimes in photos of her at my age I can't even tell the difference between us. "I don't remember wearing that shirt," and then I realize that I never have worn it. My mother majored in math and teaches it, so do I. She explains things the same way I do, down to each individual question she asks her students. We cook the same (except she's better at it), we think similarly, we even have the same precise lists we make whenever we're planning things that we both call "our brain". It seems I've inherited almost everything from my mom.

But there are three distinct things I've inherited from my father: my hair, my athleticism, and the crazy. My father and I both are pretty mellow people. We like to mingle with friends and strangers. We tell stories and laugh and can take a lot of abuse and let it roll off our backs. But some triggers are deadly. There are some things that happen that make us just snap and suddenly we are acting impulsively and intuitively and plain old crazy. The trigger is usually some supposed injustice or someone endangering themselves or others.

Yesterday, after school, I was walking from the office to my classroom. I had several things in my hands and had left my phone and keys in my room. The school was locked down at this point and several students were waiting outside of the gate for a ride. About seven of my girls were huddled at the corner giggling and pointing at the high school boys strutting across the street. The boys made flirtatious comments and generally pea cocked for the girls. There were so many boys that they could not all fit side by side on the sidewalk so several started walking in the street. I yelled out to them to get out of the street. No response. My girls echoed my demand and the boys, proving their manliness, started to walk out farther into the street. I screamed again that if they did not get on the sidewalk, I was going to call the cops. All ten were now walking in the street taking up an entire lane and causing the cars to swerve around them. Something inside me snapped.

I put down all the things in my hands, walked toward the fence, climbed over it (with only a momentary hesitant voice inside my head saying, "This could be really stupid...") and started to jog toward the crowd. When I reached them, they seemed very confused. I recognized none of them as previous students, but I herded them to the sidewalk anyway saying something like, "You will not die in front of my school. Stay on the sidewalk!" and I'm sure they noticed the crazy in my eyes. "Sorry, we didn't hear you!" "Really, we're really sorry," "Yeah, we'll be more careful!" Saying anything to just make the crazy lady stop.

I instantly realized how dumb this was. I had to walk the block back to my school's crosswalk (I couldn't very well jaywalk after that.) I didn't have my phone or keys and I had no idea how I was going to get back in. After I used the cross walk and tried to greet observing students normally (the whole time feeling totally embarrassed) I noticed that the office door was open. I went in and confessed my stupidity to those inside and hoped that my new principal has a sense of humor.

Later that night, I realized that I'm not quite as young as I used to be and I was a little sore from my hoisting over. I called my dad and said, "Thanks for the genetic make-up!" "Why, did you hit someone?" he asked. Thanks for the crazy, Dad.