A Time to Talk: Can’t make a monkey out of me

Brian O'Neill

A Time to Talk

There was big news for the non-female gender in the Jan. 13 edition of The News Tribune. I was thumbing through the paper, filled with hope that it would be the day that Garfield would actually be funny, or a local team might have won a game, when I found an article buried on page A5 titled, “Are men more evolved?”

I sat up so quickly that I knocked my collection of toenail clippings down an air vent.

The article was written by Seth Borenstein, a confirmed male and writer for The Associated Press, and it emphatically made the point that — brace yourselves — “Men are more evolved.”

I felt like jumping up, yelling “Hallelujah, brothers!” but my evolved sense of self-preservation suggested I not interrupt my wife while she “pored through our financial portfolio,” whatever that means.

The article described a study that compared the ratio of difference between the X and Y chromosomes in chimps and humans. The research was conducted by David Page and Jennifer Hughes, and it showed that the Y chromosome is 30 (!) percent different from chimps, as compared with a 2 percent difference for all other genetic codes.

From 2 percent all the way to 30 percent? Men, that’s — well, that’s ... let’s see, carry the one, allowing for common denominator and depreciation — that’s a lot more evolved!

You can bet while I read this type of historic news, I grew more excited. I couldn’t decide whether to laugh, to have a beer, or to drink a beer and laugh, causing foamy beer to shoot out of my nose.

While most women — or should I say, Y-chromosome-deficient humans — may recognize this as a clear sign of the apocalypse, as an owner of the Ferrari chromosome, I could not be more proud.

Reading on, I was not surprised to see a twist in the story, and that it came from the X side of the aisle. The co-researcher, Hughes, suggested that, just because the male Y chromosome is rapidly evolving, accelerating past chimp chromosomes, does not mean the OWNER of said genes is evolving.

So, Ms. Hughes, if the Porsche I am driving is moving faster than every other car on the road, doesn’t that mean I am also moving faster than the other drivers? If the answer is no, it can only mean the X chromosome next to me in the passenger seat is yelling at me to slow down!

Sorry, I got a little excited there.

There’s no reason for a rapidly evolving Y-type like myself to get so worked up. As a matter of fact, I think I will put all of this evolution to good use.

As soon as I finish harvesting this crop of belly button lint, I plan to head straight over to the library for some research on serious topics, like anatomy and physics.

That way, I’ll be able to figure out why beer foam shoots out of my nose when I laugh.

A Time to Talk columnist Brian O’Neill can be reached at btoflyer@comcast.net.