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With your left hand, take your right thumb and bend it towards your wrist, as far back as you can. My second brother’s pops and plants itself firmly on his wrist. He could link his hands and pull his shoulders in a full circle, rearranging themselves with a crack over his head. At some point, not directly after or during but sometime related to, my mother cried over the stupid little party trick. The perfect Hosey-Thomas is short and stiff and even proportioned. If you are tall and flexible you are far more Thomas, and you probably won’t bald until later in life, but you just might fall apart before you get to revel in having hair at 50. You are on the wrong side of the Hosey-Thomas punnett square.

At some point, this essay was going to be about genetics. But the reality is that I know jack shit about genetics. What I do know is that my great grandmother’s spine crumbled at 60. And that by the time I was eight and wanted to jump rope, my mother couldn’t jump anymore. You would think that with how strong femurs are hips don’t break so often. In some sense, you would be correct. Actually snapping your femur is rare, unless you happen to be old. But in a slightly less literal sense, breaking is also when the hips begin to glide ever so slightly off their track. Slowly but inevitably losing functionality, a little more everyday.

This essay would be easier to write if there weren’t so many things to avoid. After genetics, I had set out to write about Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS).  Although there is plenty of material, the issue is that most of it is about my mother, who prefers certain things not to be talked about. So I can’t tell you about Chinese traditional medicines, or white plastic bracelets that are hard to get off. I could talk to you about punnett squares, or the likelihood of my brother’s connective tissue also slowly deteriorating, but the truth is that again, I know very little about punnett squares. 

I do, however, have a theory. And it may not seem related to you, because it isn’t. But if you lock a child in a car with only the music of Elton John for long enough,as a coping mechanism,  they start to convince themselves that they like Elton John to the point that maybe they do like Elton John. Maybe deep down they always loved Elton John. 

In this way, we are not like crows. In a survey of 27 crows, 100% said that they did not own a vinyl edition of Madman Across the Water, or a cd, or a cassette, or hell, even added to a spotify playlist. This was definitely what finally drew an end to my bird photography phase. Rage against the crows. Maybe the idea that we shouldn’t put too much energy into obsessing over things that could care less finally rubbed off on me. Or I just need to lock crows in cars with Elton John on the radio so that we can have similar interests. 

Elton John or no (no isn’t an option, there is always Elton John), I rather like road trips. Tuning out the Elton John and whatever mild traffic infractions whoever’s driving is committing, I get to drift into my thoughts (make up scenarios where Ryan Reynolds is my uncle, wondering what would happen if England was a real place.) 

This particular trip, our Blue honda Odyssey That Could was putting along to Tennessee. I was 10, it was Christmas Eve, 2017. According to Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-9-603 “All drivers and front seat passengers are covered by the seat belt law and must have a seat belt properly fastened about their bodies at all times when the vehicle is in a forward motion.” Notably, this does not apply to my mother, lying on a quilt in the trunk,  scrolling through facebook. I think my parents were under the impression that we were breaking the law. It was worth it to them.

The implications of my mother not coming to Tennessee with us probably would have included my father killing himself with the four of his children wailing in the background. 

My mother was physically incapable of sitting still for three hours. Her hip and back surgery may not have seemed worth it then. 

Hypermobile EDS (hEDS) is thought to occur in 1 of 3,100-5,000 people. Seemingly, the  most prevalent symptom is generalized joint hypermobility. For example many people with hEDS are able to pull their thumb backwards all the way to their wrist. Joint hypermobility doesn’t always cause pain or other issues. However, joint hypermobility is often associated with joint instability. Joint instability is essentially when bones are not held in place properly. Further, joints are held together by connective tissue, mainly made of collagen. Certain changes in genes which produce collagens can cause the collagen to be ineffective, these being the root of hEDS. 

They started putting her back together in St. Louis. Guiding her hip back into its socket and securing it there with screws. The gateway arch is underwhelming once you realize the events of Percy Jackson never actually happened.  Actually, it’s almost less interesting than the Lewis and Clark museum below it. 

My eldest brother has always been afraid of heights, though he is the tallest. 

hEDS is a dominant inheritance pattern. Only one copy of the gene is needed in order for it to be inherited. I have three brothers. There are four of us and a 50% chance for each of us that we have hEDS. I wish that my brother would live bolder. Before they are consumed by St. Louis and driving braces and fluffy steering wheel covers  and Chinese traditional medicine and yoga and maybe Elton John.  Progressive can’t protect you from becoming your parents, but they can protect your home and auto when you bundle with them. Got milk? 

In May of 1967 the initial phases of a rather peculiar study were presented at the Western Psychological Association in San Francisco, California. In essence, it details the misadventures of some old white men (probably)  trying to make kinky rats. I will provide a basic outline as it pertains to this essay so far , but if you’re determined to learn more about kinky rats, google a paper called “The facilitative effects of shock and sensory deprivation on bar-pressing during extinction.” For those of you who don’t care enough, the experiment uses 16 rats, in groups of four. 2/4 rat environments have a bar that provides shocks, the other 2/4 do not. Rats under the particular circumstance of sensory deprivation and shock bar tended to press the bar the most. Maybe the rats grew to enjoy the shock. Maybe it was just something to do in a void of nothing. Maybe crows would listen to Elton John if it was the only CD in the glovebox of a blue honda odyssey. Maybe somebody should find out. 

For me,  a blue honda odyssey is very nearly the epitome of family. However, no blue honda odyssey has ever been driven, owned, or treasured by a crow. In fact it’s very likely the crows regularly shit on blue honda odysseys. If crow families don’t think that a blue honda odyssey is the epitome of family, who are we to say otherwise? We have to at least try to understand crows, as despite their apparent distaste for blue honda odysseys, crow families are very similar to human families. In 2013 Kaeli Swift (avian behavioral ecologist) began to create and observe crow funerals. In order to create a crow funeral, a masked volunteer would go to a place with alot of crows and hold out a taxidermied crow. A crowd of crows, a murder, if you will, would gather and divebomb the volunteer. Crows have facial recognition, and would try to divebomb the volunteer in the mask even if they weren’t carrying a dead crow. So no, becoming a crow god is not a safe backyard activity. 

As far as I know, none of my family’s funerals have  been 15-20 minutes of uninterrupted screeching, but maybe they should have. Crow family structure is not too different from that of humans. Most crows mate for life, but are generally sluts. Furthermore, if a crows partner is injured, (or in the crow army, I assume) they are far more likely to be cheated on. Despite this, crows have a divorce rate of 0% (to balance out the marriage rate, also 0%), and  are very close with their family members. Young crows have been observed to stay with their families and help raise the next several broods of chicks. Even after crows have reached maturity and found their own partner(s), some will pay visits to their siblings and parents. My 23 year old brother lives in the basement. He is hardly like a crow.  I wonder if he cries at funerals.  

After you dislocate a shoulder it will never regain full function without surgery. I guess it tracks  that one of my brothers is already falling apart.

The high average height requirement for roller coasters is 48 inches. (121.99 centimeters) I despised theme parks as a kid. Second rate amusement parks, Busch gardens specifically. In case you were unaware, and you probably were, Busch Gardens is a small amusement park in Florida. The “Air Grover” opened on March 27th, 2010. It has an apex height of 25 feet and a max speed of 22 mph. Even when I was eight, I knew it was boring, but the inch requirement was a mere 38 inches (96.52 centimeters.)  I rode it over and over and over again. It was the only available thing in a void of restrictions. 

The kitchen countertops were behemoths, the Southland Park water slide was my Mount Everest. I had always been jealous of the Thomas-ish Hosey-Thomases. Understanding develops over time.

Short is king. I am nothing if not short. I sat in a car seat until I was 10 but I am short and I am stiff and even proportioned and I am on the right side of the Hosey-Thomas Punnett square.

Under my car seat was a crust of crumbs, ingrained in the gray faux leather of the blue Honda Odyssey. I wonder if they vacuum the seats and look under the floor mats and open the glove box when they scrap a Blue Honda Odyssey. 

The Elton CDs stayed  in the glovebox. There was still bird shit on the windshield when she sold it off. New evidence shows that crows do not like any cars. Even  if the new non-blue non-Honda odyssey has a steering wheel that is easy to turn with the weakened collagen in your wrist. Despite the  obvious betterness of a new car, there  is still a quilt, and maybe a cane in the trunk. Even years later when the hip surgery seems more worth it and no one knows where the driving braces are. My brother dislocated his shoulder and maybe it will start to glide farther and farther out of its socket, and the Hosey-Thomas punnett square will fulfill its meticulously planned destiny.