FAMILY TREE

“Did you read this?” I asked my husband Steven as we sat on the couch reading the morning newspaper.

Steven looked up over his paper. “Read what?”

“This article about DNA tests?” I held up the article. “Seems like there's all kinds of drama for some people.”

“We already took ours.” he shrugged his shoulders. “We didn't have any surprises.”

“Wait a second.” I scanned the paper then put my finger on the part I wanted to tell him about. “It says right here that the police can now go through a database where they can track a criminal by looking at a relative's DNA!” I had to laugh. “Can you imagine being in that courtroom as they tell the defendant, 'You can thank your Uncle Louie for getting caught! He wanted to find out if he came from Spain and instead we found you for breaking and entering!'” I looked back over at Steven. “Certainly makes the family reunions a little more tense!”

Steven started to laugh. “Maybe that might make their family reunions better.”

I was still scanning the article “Oh, there's even more drama!” I cried. “It says one woman got back her results and it said the Dad she'd always known wasn't her real Dad.” I looked over at Steven. “She called the company because she thought they made a mistake.”

Steven just shook his head. “What did they tell her?” He'd put his paper down and put his feet up on the coffee table.

“She said they were really very kind when they told her she was a NPE.”

“A what?”

“Genealogists call it non-parental event, a NPE.” I read further down. “She felt isolated until she joined a Facebook group of NPE's and they have over four thousand members so far!” I looked sadly over at Steven. “I guess that's one way to deal with it.”

Steven just shook his head. “I was surprised when I found out I wasn't as German as I thought. I can't imagine finding that out on my results.”

“I guess you could try looking on the bright side.”

Steven looked confused. “What's the bright side?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “You get a bigger family?”

Steven shook his head. “I guess that's one way to look at it.”

“Seriously though.” I sighed. “I wasn't thinking about any of these things when we did ours.” I put the newspaper down and looked over at Steven. “Now the companies are admitting that even though they strip your name and any identifying details, a data breach could reactivate that information.”

“Well, there's nothing we can do about it now.” Steven said as he shrugged his shoulders.

“That's true.” I sighed again as I looked back at the newspaper. “They even ended the article with 'caveat emptor'.”

Our son, Alex walked into the room. “Morning! What are you two up to?”

Steven looked over his shoulder. “Your Mom and I were discussing the DNA tests.”

Alex shook his head. “Yeah, I'm never doing one of those.” He stifled a yawn. “It creeps me out that anyone could have my DNA and do anything they wanted with it.” He headed towards the kitchen.

Once he was out of the room I looked over at Steven. “Do we let him know they kinda already have his DNA because we took the test?” I whispered.

Steven slowly shook his head no.