Playing The Hand You're Dealt - The Inalienable Predictions Of Genetics

Bobby Lucca got his mother’s red hair, his father’s oversized lips, Uncle Harry’s long, Roman nose, and Aunt Betty’s ears.  Every Easter when the family got together at Aunt Tilly’s for antipasto, lasagna, veal roast and ham pie, the family marveled at how much Bobby looked like just about everyone around the table.

“Let’s hope it stops right there”, said Lou Lehman, the next door neighbor, referring to Harry Grillo’s temper, Leona Petrucci’s drinking, and Joe Bello’s womanizing.  Lou had seen generations of Luccas come and go, chips off the old block, clones of wayward fathers and flighty mothers, and colleagues of the second and third cousins who sat in Tilly’s living room, gossiping about their men and how this irresponsible, wayward strain would someday have to peter out.  Lou doubted that the men would ever change, and that as caring and pleasant as the women were, there would always be a succubus in the bunch.

Angie Panto, for example, was an apple from a different orchard, and as much as the Luccas tried to figure out where this nasty, brutish, harridan came from, they came up empty. Genes and heredity being what they are, searching in a more distant past might be revealing.  Bits and pieces of genetic material come down through the generations, get twisted and gnarled and show up in the most unusual places in the most surprising forms.

Of course memories of anyone that far back had been so distorted by telling and retelling that after two generations of false recollections resembled nothing like what they might have been; but she had to have come from somewhere, so the Luccas pinned Angie on ‘The Fat Lady From Silver City’.  In fact, in Lou Lehman’s opinion she was a lot like Tilly’s sister, but no one had ever brought that up.

In any case, everyone knew where Bobby came from, but, given the vagaries of genetic code, they watched him carefully to see how closely his DNA matched that of his parents, aunts, and uncles.  There were early signs of stubbornness and inattention, and later a certain moroseness and funk, all of which traits were unfortunately recognizable.  He got none of the intelligence of his father’s side of the family, and certainly none of the looks and charm of his mother’s; and his personality was just as jumbled and Francis Bacon-looking as his face. 

The argument over Nature-Nurture goes back and forth depending on socio-political ethos. In a progressive era, few want to nail anything down.  There can be no such thing as an immutable, predictable human nature, for if there such a thing one would have to accept territorialism, aggression, and implacable self-interest as givens in human society.  If, on the other hand, human nature was only genetic predisposition – a predilection for putting one’s family first, expanding one’s horizons and fields, and guarding against one’s enemies – then it could be tinkered with and reconfigured to fit the time’s utopian vision.

In a conservative era, few want to accept any kind of genetic weak wiring.  We are as we have always been, and better off for it.  Competition between weak and strong always end up in evolutionary progress.  Wars may be unpleasant but necessary to clear the chaff from the wheat.  There is no such thing as the best of all possible worlds, just worlds as they are.

'Play the hand you've been dealt', Bobby's mother said to him when she saw him studying his face in the mirror, hoping that the right tilt of the chin, the left profile, a Burt Lancaster smile might give the face he saw more viability.  But there was no refuge.  There was no denying that he was an unattractive boy whose cards dealt were undeniably those of his relatives.  It was no luck of the draw, one which at least could have given vent to a hatred of his Creator.  It was genetic destiny.  His parents were to blame if anyone. 

Yet there too he couldn't hate his mother for marrying Emil Lucca, an up-and-comer, ugly as the day is long but promising.   A successful small scale businessman at 25, an entrepreneur by 30, and an industrialist by 40.  She made a good choice, a logical choice, and if she had to put up with a husband with the looks of a throwback, it was worth it.  The Luccas wanted for nothing. 

This did nothing for the lesson of Aunt Tilly's Easter dinner and the genetic reminders getting drunk on Lambrusco and filling themselves with tortellini.  Lou Lehman was right - Bobby had a bit of each and every one of this dismal crowd, and that only went back one generation.  God only knew what bits of random DNA from the past had hooked themselves to his double helix?

Bobby took stock.  He was not the sharpest tack in the drawer and knew this from the very beginning when Mr. Lewis, the math teacher, declared him hopeless, gave him a piece of paper and a box of crayons and asked him to color within the lines.  The teacher was censured for such impertinent and abusive behavior, and thanks to him Bobby's nickname Crayon Boy stuck through high school. 

The crayon insult was ironic, for Bobby was even more inept at art than math - although of course, art had none of the same objectifiable indictors.  Bobby drew stick figures will into the seventh grade, and couldn't seem to manage much more in the way of action than a series of arrows pointing the way. 

Pharoah Jones, a black boy from the town ghetto was as dumb as a stone but could run like lightning. 'Made for the NFL', his coach said and asked the school administration to pass him as long as he scored touchdowns and won the city trophy.  Bobby was as 'uncoordinated as a three-legged pig', the coach said in an aside to his equipment manager, an unnecessary piling on to a boy who meant well but just was, well, no one's model. 

Bobby was slow but not completely dumb and realized the uphill climb he would have in life, this made patently clear by his disappointed father who tried to propel him in this direction and that with no success.  As a boy he was given chess boards, Legos, and puzzles, but he just sat there looking at them, unable to make sense of any except his baby sister's America puzzle, fifty big, colored pieces with pictorial suggestions of where they should go.  Buffalo for Montana, for example, and a ten-gallon hat for Texas. 

How was it that God gave him no compensation.  The ugliest girl in the class could dance like a prima ballerina, Pharoah Jones was a cheetah on the ball field; pimply, short, dwarfish Ikey Cohen was a whiz at algebra.  Bobby had got nothing.  He was and always would be this potpourri of unpleasant bits. 

Now at the time the American progressive movement was just beginning to exert its influence.  One of the precepts of this political philosophy was 'mutability'.  No human or social system was permanent.  There was no such thing as an immutable human nature which determined personal and social behavior.  There might be some residual remnants of the cave man still within, but by and large today's human being was a creature evolving logarithmically to perfection. 

The dysfunctionality of the inner city had nothing to do with genetics but white supremacist oppression.  The slower students in a class had simply not found their place on the spectrum of 'multiple intelligences'.  The full-sized were just victims of capitalist market manipulation, luring them down the candy aisle. Etc. 

So when Esta Feinstein discovered Bobby Lucca, she knew she had the research project she had been looking for.  Esta had known Bobby ever since they were in elementary school together; but unlike Bobby, Esta was an academic whiz and went on to Harvard where she majored in psycho-sociology and based on her performance went on to MIT for graduate work. 

Esta had become a committed progressive along the way, and not only did she believe from an academic standpoint that the Nature side of the Nature-Nurture argument was oversold, but that her political philosophy confirmed it.  Human beings were, as the old Deconstructionists Derrida and Lacan had said, nothing more than products of the exogenous variables of history. 

Bobby's upbringing - his less than generous parents, his intellectual abuse at school, the dismissive elitism of his athletic coaches, and the unholy zeitgeist of adolescent intimidation - was the only reason for his lack of performance in any field.  As for his looks, they would have to be given over to an act of God or Darwinian theory, but they had nothing to do with the 'whole person' vision embraced by Esta's progressive colleagues. 

She would prove that it was society and its false assumptions of success and ability was responsible for the fate of Bobby Lucca.  If he could be coaxed out of his societally confected shell, she would have proved her scientific and political point. 

No dice.  As hard as she tried without compromising the objective integrity of her research, she saw no results.  The young man was simply without the tools to build a future.  He had indeed been dealt a hand from a loaded deck.  He had no mathematical reasoning, struggled with the simplest texts, had no artistic empathy whatsoever and indeed saw the world as a collection of stick figures, and was indeed as uncoordinated a boy as she had ever seen. 

'We love him of course'. said Bobby's parents, 'but we cashed in our chips long ago'. 

'Perhaps I should have selected someone with more promise', Esta concluded after she had sat through one of Aunt Tilly's Easter dinners with three generations of Luccas, Grillos, and Petruccis, an assortment of all those inferior (she hated to use that word, but it was becoming more and more evident) genetic strains which had contributed to the unfortunate DNA of her subject, Bobby. 

If a person is lucky and has an epiphany before it is too late, he or she can change directions accordingly.  In Esta's case, faced with the irrefutable fact of Nature's bad hand, the essentiality of genetics and human nature, and the competitive, winnowing market of modern society, she turned coat.  If the foundational principle of progressivism  - the ability to evolve, progress, and prosper through the creation of a sustaining, formative, and supportive environment - didn't hold water, then one might as well go to the other side. 

And to the consternation of her family, friends, and colleagues she did so.  One simply doesn't abandon one's principles like that, they said in unison; but Esta had become her own woman, conservative to the core, an apostate to many but an intellectual prison-breaker to many, many more.