WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU WANT? ASK YOUR DNA.

Who are you and what do you want? Simple question, right? Well, try answering it. Not so simple, is it? Usually I reserve that question for people who are bothering me for some reason and won't tell me why. I'm usually pretty polite to people, figuring do unto others and all that, but sometimes people just exasperate the hell out of their fellow humans and you have to sort of force them to get to the point. It might be on the phone, or somebody intruding on your personal space and you're wondering what's on their mind but they're not saying. Usually when that happens these people are selling something, some product, religion or political point of view and they beat around the bush long enough to annoy the crap out of you. Why? Get to the point! So, when I've run out of polite ways to get them to do so I ask the who they are and what do they want.

Truth be told, that simple question rarely gets me a straight answer. It does let the other person know, however, that you're tired of dancing around the matter at hand. Then I might go with "State your business!" Again, sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. On the phone that's easy enough to deal with. Click. If they really want to speak with you they now have an incentive to gather their thoughts and call back with a less rambling approach. In person, though, you have to be a little more creative with people who are attempting to eat chunks of your life you'll never get back.

Getting accosted by strangers pretending to be your buddy is a pain most of us can do without. Maybe it's their job to do so, but that doesn't obligate me to make it easy for them. "May I have a few moments of your time?" When I hear that I usually go with a one-word answer: No. Hopefully that will convey the thought that my time is for me and the people I love or work with, and since I don't recognize you, you don't qualify. If you're an interesting person I might be persuaded to spare some time, but you've got very small window of time in which to convince me that you're not just another annoying pain in the ass looking to sell me something. I like interesting people and I'm all ears when I meet them, but most people who accost you unbidden are pretty tedious and life's too short and too full of genuinely fascinating people to waste time on bumbling idiots who can't get to the point.

Okay, now that the those people are out of the way, let me ask myself that same question: Who am I and what do I want? Let's go with Part 1 of the question, who I am: Well... hmmm... let me see... that's a tough one. Well, I'm this guy you see, a guy from Brooklyn... not that that matters to anyone but me and maybe some other people from Brooklyn... well, I'm this guy named Bob... And I'm... no, wait... well, yes I am a guy named Bob from Brooklyn, but who am I? That's not so easy. If I approached you with something specific, as a stranger accosting you for some specific purpose, I'd have a ready answer. I'd state my business with you and proceed from there. I'm pretty direct when I have business to conduct. But in general? Who am I in general? Let me think about that awhile. I really don't know.

Maybe if I had my DNA code I could find an easy answer. There's a service being offered by scientific companies to provide their customers with their entire genetic code, involving some six billion units of chemical signals in a human genome that go into making each of us the unique snowflakes that we are. I'm a little short of the $350,000 price tag for that service, by about 349,950 bucks. Maybe if I search the couch cushions again and my coat pockets. Look under the car set, too. I once found a twenty there and felt pretty good about that. I don't know exactly how useful it would be having one's own genetic code in your possession, but according to scientists it will tell you why you are the way you are. Your code makes you left or right-handed, fair skinned or dark, blonde or brunette, short or tall, fat or skinny, keen-eyed or myopic, freckled or clear complexioned, whatever traits you have or are likely to develop.

Apparently that's the big advantage of having your code, knowing what diseases you may be prone to down the line. This way you can stay away from sugar if the code tells you you'll develop diabetes, get extra checkups if you might be cancer-prone and practice all manner of preventative measures for things of that sort. None of which will help you, however, if a grand piano falls on your head or somebody gets annoyed that you wasted all that money on your genetic code and murders you. So maybe I'll skip the genetic code. I don't think it helps explain why I'm grumpy in the morning before I've had my coffee or why I don't care for Jerry Lewis movies but like The Three Stooges when both of those things are pretty whacky.

Because even with the code, the world and what goes on in it have a lot to say on who you become. The people who raise you and with who you interact have a lot if input too. Sure, I can't escape being tall and skinny or right-handed, and I can't grow back the hair I lost when I was in my forties. All that stuff is etched in the stone of my personal genetic code. But whatever brain your code gives you is not subject to predisposed behavior like a dog or a cow or a salmon swimming upstream to spawn and die. And the brain my code provided to me tells me that even if I did have all that money to spend on owning my own genetic code I sure as hell wold not understand it or do much of anything with it other than sticking it in a drawer or closet with the waffle iron, the tread mill, the self-help books and all the other impulse purchases that seemed like a good idea at the time but were not.

Knowing that you might get Alzheimer's Disease when you get older is no bargain. There's no real cure for that and the dread of forgetting everything might drive you into some distracting frenzy of trying to remember everything you might think is pertinent, maybe cluttering up the house with sticky pads full of your children's names, the capitol of Oregon and your home address and social security number. Which if course, wouldn't help when you get senile and don't have a clue as what these cryptic notes mean. Well, most of us who will never develop Alzheimer's Disease forget a lot of things during the course of a long life. There's only so much skull space available for things and forgetting is Nature's own delete button. I've already forgotten Algebra but I figure that's no big loss, the only people who really need to remember it are engineers and mathematicians. The only reason it is taught to other people is to teach them to think in a certain abstract and elliptical way. Half of life is solving for X.

At age 55, I pretty much know a lot of what will happen to me because it's already happened. And not all that much of it seems to have anything to do with my genetic code. I'm sure that there are those who would argue the opposite, that who we are, what we do and how we react to this world is the product of our genetic programming. I sort of doubt that, since nowhere in those six billion units of information is there any indication of who might get run over by a car or have that grand piano squash them like a bug on the sidewalk. As they say, defecation occurs. And it's what happens in life that make you who you are more than the fact that you are a short, left-handed red head with a predisposition to emphysema.

And the brain your code has handed you is a pretty elastic organ. You can decide for yourself whether or not you like chocolate or vanilla, or both. You can also decide if something is true or not, no matter how many people are telling you it is or isn't. You are also capable of thinking about stuff that nobody else ever has. Zebras, on the other hand, never invented anything, wrote any novels or poetry, formulated a code of ethics or cured any diseases. Their genetic code sort of stops at "eat grass, procreate and watch out for lions." Not a lot of room for wondering about stuff in the Animal Kingdom. Humans, within the limitations of each of our brains, have the infinite ability to wonder about stuff. One result was the unravelling if our genetic code, none of which answers my original question of who I am an what I want.

That's another thing we humans can do, let our minds wander. I'm real good at that. So who am I and what do I want? That question will have to wait for another day, since part of who I am is a guy who posts regular blogs on this web site and it's time to do so. Meanwhile, I'll give it some thought when I'm not busy thinking about the matters at hand.