Life List #253: Take a DNA Ancestry Test.
I took a DNA ancestry test and the results will shock you. Actually no, no they will not.
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I’m not going to lie: I was kind of hoping for a bombshell. What that bombshell might have been, exactly, I have no idea. Native American? East Asian? Ecuadorian? Who knows. But, spoiler alert, I’m European. 99.9% European.
Are you as shocked as I am?
I’d wanted to take a DNA test for some time. Not like in a Maury Povich/Jeremy Kyle prove my paternity kind of way. Rather, in one of those spit in a cup and send it in the mail and get a chart of your lineage kind of ways. An ancestry test.
I actually know very little about my ancestry. “I’m German and Polish,” is about all I could ever really say. My dad’s side was Bohemian, German and Polish; my mom’s was Polish with some distant Spanish grandfather thrown in the mix. I was hoping taking a DNA ancestry test would tell me more. Or tell me something I didn’t already know. Or completely blindside me with the results.
Because in the commercials for these things the people are always blindsided by the results.
There’s always that African American woman with surprise Native American blood. Or that 100% Italian stallion who is really only 15%. And we’ve all seen those videos of men and women so proud of their pure-bred heritage only to find out that they are really, actually, a melting pot.
Anyways.
I sent away for a 23andMe DNA testing kit and, after the kit arrived in the mail, I waited the requisite 30 minutes after eating/drinking/brushing my teeth, I spit in a tube, and I mailed my spit back to the company. Six-to-eight-weeks later I got an email saying that some poor sap had analyzed my spit, and my results were ready.
Those results?
I am 99.9% European.
I am 70.8% Eastern European. I am 10.5% Northwestern European. I am 7.3% Southern European. I am 11.3% broadly European.
Not an outlier in the bunch.
My fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes don’t lie, I suppose.
I mean, I guess it doesn’t make a very compelling commercial to show someone who found out they are exactly who they thought they were. Someone with absolutely no surprises in their ancestral line. But, despite the fact that my DNA profile didn’t tell me anything I couldn’t have figured out by looking in the mirror, it was still an interesting experiment for only having to shell out $99 and a little of my saliva.
Take a DNA Ancestry Test was number 253 on my life list.
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Dave
October 29, 2017at11:22 amI want to do this so bad!! I feel like I have a good idea what I am, but you never know until you try it, lol