The genetics of red hair is a special case. There is not a correlative to it in the eye-coloring model. Red hair is governed separately, and is “over-written” on the color “chosen” by the ordinary genetics of hair color. The redness can vary in intensity, genetically, and it can be written over blond or brown or even black hair – hair of any color. This accounts for the wild variation in shading of red hair. Red over black and red over dark brown can be difficult to detect visually - -especially a mild redness. This can account for a lot of the “surprise” redheads that appear in families.
Also, and maybe this is what you were saying, two blue-eyed parents have, between them, four genes for blue eyes and no other eye-coloring genes. No matter how you shuffle and deal, their kids will all have blue eyes. It is the least mysterious pairing available.
All this talk about birthdays got me to thinking about whether there was a significant event that took place 9 months prior to my birth. I counted back and the fateful day is… my older sister’s birthday! :eek:
Oh, yeah. My family secret: early slave heritage. My grandmother waited until after my first child was born to tell me because she was afraid I might decide not to have children if I knew. I am blond with light skin and green eyes and there’s nothing visible in any of my relatives to suggest any African heritage, but that may be because this was about 1800. My x-times-great grandfather was a plantation owner whose first wife brought a half-sister (also probably cousi) slave with her into the marriage. The first wife had several children, then died. The husband did not re-marry officially, but formed a relationship with his first wife’s half-sister. They had one daughter together. She could not legally inherit, but being probably at least 7/8 Scots Irish, she could certainly pass as white. In about 1820, about a year after her mom died, when her dad knew he was dying, he arranged for her to marry a white man (actually named White) in North Carolina, where no one knew her past, and gave her a generous dowry equal to what his other kids would get as an inheritance when he died. She and her husband had eleven children and the family were fairly famous North Carolina furniture makers. The daughter I descended from married into a German farming family in Illinois shortly before the Civil War, and died in childbirth with her first child, a daughter. The daughter was raised by her Illinois grandparents, speakng mostly German, but after she had her first daughter, the North Carolina grandmother made a trip to Illinois to tell her about how she would need to raise her daughter very carefully – not letting her do things that were immodest or artistic because the past might “show” if people started to suspect her of being unusual. I’m thinking that in race, as in religion, it may be that there’s no zealot like a convert.
I found out, just before I got married, that I am 1/32 Cherokee on my dad’s side.
Maybe the fact that I’m actually mixed race would have been scandalous when my dad was younger (he was born in 1938), but it certainly isn’t now. It’s considered kind of cool now by me and my friends.
I believe the gestation period is 38 to 39 weeks, not exactly nine months (of course some months are longer than others). So counting off months wouldn’t work. You might still have been conceived on Feb 14, though.
Want to find out when you were conceived (roughly, and assuming you arrived on your due date)?
Add 7 days to your birthday and take away 9 months.
This is based on the rule that if you know the date someone conceived you take away 7 days and add 9 months. If they don’t know the date of conception, you add 7 days and 9 months to the first day of their last period.
So, Xmas day conception gives you a birthday around the 1st of September.
Conception on New Years Eve gives you a birthday around the 8th of September.
Valentine’s Day gives a date about the 21st November.
St Patrick’s Day gives you the 24th December.
4th of July gives you the 12th April.
Hallowe’en gives you 7th June.
My dad fathered a child when he was a senior in high school. My brothers have no knowledge of this whatsoever, and I’m not sure if my mom does.
My mom got pregnant before they were married, and she went to New York City to have a 2nd trimester abortion. I don’t think my brothers know about that, either.
My eldest brother’s birthday is November 17. Mom and Dad’s anniversary was March 3. My mom was supposed to start her period the day of the wedding.
My mom’s sister A got married at 19 and divorced at 20. She never told her daughters about it, but they found their parents’ marriage certificate and asked why in the world her last name was wrong.
My uncle (who was in the navy) probably fathered at least one child. He also made a deathbed confession to having killed a man (and no, he never saw “action” during his tours of duty).
My grandmom, born in 1898 was never married. She was always addressed as “Mrs.” Lambe and she always said her husband died before my father was born.
She always made out to be that super holy Methodist church lady. I found out after she passed away and we went through paperwork naming her father as Charles Lambe. I asked my mom, and she said she thought everyone knew. I was shocked - out of wedlock in 1922.
Where is that quote quoted from? If it’s upstream in this thread, I sure can’t find it.
Oh yeah, another family secret – my maternal grandparents met early during WWII. My gradnfather was seventeen and my grandmother was fourteen but told him she was seventeen. They were both born on March 7. She said they were born on the same day, but glossed over the year part. Halfway through his senior year of high school, he graduated early and enlisted. My grandmother, then fifteen, claimed to be pregnant and insisted he marry her before he went away. He declined. While he was gone, she married another man, ten days before her sixteenth birthday. When she divorced him just after she turned seventeen, her mother had to petition for the divorce on her behalf because my grandmother was still a minor. My grandparents got back together after the war and married when my grandmother was twenty-one and my grandfather was twenty-four. My youngest aunt divorced at seventeen and my grandfather took her aside and told her the story of her mother so she wouldn’t feel so bad. She, of course, told everybody else, but we all pretended to my grandmother that we didn’t know. After she died, I found her first marriage license and divorce decree.
My husband didn’t find out until he was in his late teens that two of his cousins were actually his half-sisters. His mother was very young when she first married and basically ran off to New York and abandoned the kids. Her husband wasn’t able to care for them (alcoholic and depressive) and so her mother urged her older sister to adopt the two girls. It was a bit of a rough spot in the family for a while. The “cousins” were upset at my husband’s mother’s decision not to tell her subsequent 4 kids the truth for so long.
I want Sampiro to reply to this thread. There have to be a few family secrets he hasn’t gotten around to telling us about yet.
On my side of the family my dad was drummed out the army. My uncle had a gambling problem. My two first cousins are gay.
On DH’s side of the family he has the ubiquitous gay aunt. Also his birthday is seven months after his parent’s wedding anniversary. And he has an uncle who’s currently in a mental institution.
My family is almost as vanilla as it gets … well, my sister was born 7 months after the folks were married, but that was never a secret (more of a wink-wink, nudge-nudge thing, and something that caused us to really take our folks seriously when they said “Make sure you use birth control every single time …”).
But my husband (the youngest in his family) has a half-brother about his age that he found out about by accident. (They have the same father.) He is not sharing this information with his mother.
Seriously. I feel for you. I have a real sister who just might go batshit over information like this…which is why my dad told ME. Her freaked outedness over having a sibling she’s never heard of would totally take a back seat to the fact that she’d gotten through 30 years on this planet and never KNOWN.
Then there’s my mom. Keerist. Nope. I think I’ll just sit on it a while longer.
I revealed to my much younger half sister that my dad had been married to someone else between his marriage to my mother and his marriage to hers. She was about 13 when I let it slip and was all hurt and mad. I was 30 and thought the whole situation was hysterical.
My grandmother alluded to the fact that my mom and her best friend (with whom I’ve always suspected mom’s been in love and yes it’s a lady) almost got kicked out of SUNY Plattsburg for being lesbians. Grandma thought the whole point of the story is what a bitch the rumor-starter was, I thought the whole point was my theory about mom and her friend was validated.
First-Grade Caricci will probably post on a thread like this 30 years from now that his mom Ole Lady Caricci was really mean about her parents.
Both of my parents are blue-eyed. My sister and I have brown eyes.
It has long been known in my family that my mother was 17 and in high school when she married. She was pregnant before she graduated. What I just found out a year ago was that she was 14 and my father was a 19-year-old soldier when they started dating. You’d think such a relationship would never last, but they just celebrated their 49th anniversary, and are as happy as ever.
My mother still doesn’t know who her father was, but she knows she was born in wedlock. Nobody knows what happened there. OK, two people do, but they’re not talking. And they’re really old.
