Friday,  May 11, 2012 • Vol. 12--No. 302 • 4 of 39 •  Other Editions

X and Y Variable
For the first 16 years of my married life, I was the only person in my family without a Y chromosome.
• I can't help thinking that the Y chromosome was aptly named.  "Why?" is a question I have asked my boys innumerable times since the day they were born.

• "Why is there peanut butter in my shoe?"
• "Why are there Twizzlers in the hamster cage?"
• "Why did you stuff a Lego up your nose?"
• Why… why… Y?
• As amusing as life was back then, I couldn't help but wonder if I was the crazy one.   It seemed as though I was the only one in my family who thought those things were not normal.
• Then, one day, fourteen years ago, another being with an extra X entered my life and I suddenly knew without a doubt that it was the rest of my family who were a bunch of lunatics. My daughter, my extra X, had arrived.
• X is for X-quisite, X-ceptional and X-citing!  Here, in this tiny scrap of feminine humanity, I would find my sanity.
• My little girl grew into a lovely young lady who seems to be wise beyond her years.
• I never had to dig a Lego out of her nose.  In fact, I never had to dig anything out of her nose.
• She likes fruits and vegetables so it's unlikely that she'd be the one who put peanut butter in my shoes.
• The hamster didn't make it through the Ys' adolescence, so my daughter put herself in charge of our two cats so they would survive.
• However, she, like her mother, has to constantly gird herself against the Y's in our household who like to mess with her just to see if they can tick her off.  It's as if they can't stand to see peace and contentment on the face of an X.
• To be fair, though, the Y's are extremely protective of their X.  If she ever brings a boyfriend to the house to meet the family, he may not make it out alive.
• Not to worry, my 14-year old young lady has said that boys are immature and that based on the Y's in her family, she may never have a boyfriend.
• She X-plored the library last week and brought back the first book in the

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