Dear Kid,

Once upon a time, there was no such thing as DNA, and if you wanted to know (for sure) who a baby’s parents were you had to be around at the birth (to identify the mom) and hope the baby resembled his or her Pa. A lot.

In 1869, DNA was invented. Once it was invented, people (and by “people” I mean braniac scientists) wanted to know what it looked like. Enter, the Great DNA Race. (Which fortunately pre-dates reality TV because it would have made really, really bad TV. And now, the scientist is thinking. Now he’s turning 4 degrees to the left to think some more. We’ll be back to more thinking after this commercial. Worse than watching golf.)

DNA is short for deoxyribonucleic acid. But you knew that.

On February 28, 1953, James D. Watson (not of the “Come here, Mr. Watson” Watsons) and Frances H.C. Crick finally figured out that the structure of DNA was a double-helix polymer, or a spiral of two DNA strands, each containing a long chain of monomer nucleotides, wound around each other. Kind of like two teenagers in love.

The discovery of DNA was very important as it allowed Watson and Crick to win the Nobel Prize in 1962. Even more importantly, it led to an entire genre of TV crime shows in which DNA analysis (done in quicktime) allowed Our Heroes to solve crimes that would otherwise languish in the cold case files (which fortunately is another TV show so they won’t languish too long).

I’m pretty sure other good things happened on February 28th as well. (Grin. Happy Anniversary, Darling Hubby who doesn’t read my blog.)

Hope your day is fabulous, kiddo. Can’t wait to see you tonight.

Love, Mom

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Dear Kid,

I was very busy watching NCIS and CSI: Miami last night (yup, I was watching the Rerun But Still Good channel).

Aside from commercials for really bad movies (The Lego Movie) and worse TV (Marriage Bootcamp), I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

Somewhere in the 16 hours of commercials, it occurred to me that there is a commonality between “reality” TV, TV dramas, soap operas, and many other TV shows.

TV families (and I’m using a very loose definition of “families”) are looney. Relationships are all interconnected (otherwise there would be too many characters to keep track of everyone) and they are all dysfunctional (with an emphasis on the “dys”).

Even Gibbs The Amazing has a dicey relationship with his dad and has been married about 100 times.

Which is why we won’t become rich and famous by starring in our own reality show. We love and respect each other (and no one has married their cousin or murdered their step mother who turned out to be their long lost sister).

Who wants to watch an hour of me editing blogs, cooking dinner, and joking around good naturedly with kids I adore? There just isn’t enough dra-ma.

And that’s just fine with me.

Love you, kiddo.

Love, Mom