Stop reading this right now.
Stand up and take a bow. Jump up and down with your hands over your head like Rocky on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Break your arm patting yourself on your back.
You are a miracle.
How does it feel?
Here’s the point…
Since modern man came into existence 200,000 years ago there have been 10,000 generations of humans. That’s 10,000 times a mommy and a daddy made a special connection that eventually led up to you. (If you aren’t following me, maybe you should have paid attention during middle-school health class.) That’s 20,000 people combining their genetic soup.
The numbers get even more amazing if you look at another level. During intercourse, a man sends 100 million swimmers into the race. All those guys are trying to beat their brothers over the goal line. Congrats; your swimmer won. But there’s more to think about. A human male produces 325 billion of those little guys in a lifetime, and a twenty-year-old female has one million potential eggs hanging out in her ovaries. In ten thousand generations that’s 32.5 quintillion swimmers seeking 100 trillion potential eggs.
You are a miracle.
After thinking about all of this I decided to research my genealogy and discovered ancestors going back to 7th-century Ireland, 10th-century England, and 12th-century Germany. Those online ancestry sites and the mail-in DNA analysis services are fantastic.
I’ll just focus on the Irish.
The earliest forebear I found was an unemployed accountant named Bruce. He lived in a hovel near Caherconlish, a small town in County Limerick. He died on Monday, March 1, 650 A.D., after nicking himself shaving with a dull knife. The wound became infected because he used the same blade to behead a chicken before he shaved (himself – not the chicken). He passed away a week later. He was 42 years old, leaving behind nine children, seven grandchildren, his third wife, Wanda, and four dogs.
The townspeople agreed that the family and community were better off without Bruce. He was a crappy accountant, legendary blowhard, problem drinker, and horseshit neighbor. In the years before his death, the local pub stopped accepting his checks and the church banned him because he argued with the priest during the service.
I am a descendant of Bruce and Wanda’s third daughter, Candy. She danced at a gentlemen’s club near the Limerick docks. With a name like Candy, what were her parents thinking would happen? Her common-law husband and best customer, Frank, died on June 6, 652, in an explosion at the brewery where he mopped up after hours. He said he worked in quality control because he sampled the product every night. (After her stage career, Candy went back to Caherconlish and told fortunes and cast spells for coins. Candy lived to the age of 89. Her fourth husband, Sammy, killed her after finding her in bed with his best friend.)
Frank and Candy had one son named Donald. When Donald was five, his loving parents sold him to King Máenach mac Fíngin of Munster. Donny worked for the kennel keeper. He was good with the dogs, but he died of rabies at the age of 17 on November 11, 665. A month before he died, Donald fathered a child with a scullery maid named Brenda. They had a one-night stand in the woods behind the pigsty.
Brenda was on the heavy side and slept through health class, so she didn’t know she was with child until she delivered her son, Ike. She could not afford to raise the baby. Donald’s mother, Candy, took Ike to live with her above the Limerick gentleman’s club. After Candy returned to Caherconlish Ike resided with her in the fortune-telling hut down a narrow alley behind the town forge where he was an apprentice.
Ike disappointed Candy by joining the monastery east of town when he was 18. He did not like the physical work of a blacksmith. However, a year after entering the priesthood Ike had a dalliance with a nun named Margret-Ellen-Ruth-Pat MacMurrough. I guess it was hard to keep a good man down. The nuns raised the child, Emmet, in the convent’s orphanage.
Ike fell from the church belfry on February 13, 685. It was never clear whether he fell or was pushed. Mother Superior Francesca-Mary-Elizabeth-Barbie was seen running from the back of the chapel immediately after Ike plummeted to his death. The monks held an investigation and conveniently concluded the accident was the result of a misadventure. Ike was a gambler who owed the nuns big money after a losing streak at their Thursday night poker game. The locals think that the nuns sent a message.
The rest of the family saga in Ireland follows a similar path of big families and many births out of or soon after wedlock. These people often died young in creative ways.
My great-grandmother Margaret Martin emigrated to America in 1889. She was 22 years old, the youngest of 12 children. She worked at a quilt factory in Chicago. She died in 1961 at the age of 94. Margaret carried a little bit of Bruce, Wanda, Candy, Frank, Donald, Brenda, Ike, Sister Margret-Ellen-Ruth-Pat, and Emmet with her across the Atlantic with the DNA of 20,000 others so I could mix my genetic soup with someone else’s genetic soup and make more miracles.