har-ish

I first encountered the double helix in Class 7. It was part of my curriculum, and I remember Dad losing his chill because, despite his best efforts, I simply wasn’t getting my head around it. At the time, DNA was just another complicated thing I was supposed to understand for an exam. I had no idea it would eventually become something I found genuinely fascinating.

That curiosity stayed. I got fascinated by genotypes and phenotypes, then wandered into Gregor Mendel, genetics, inbreeding and cross breeding, and eventually cytology.

Looking back, that was a different era of learning. There was no mad rush to crack competitive exams or collect ranks to brag about. You could get curious about something and simply follow the thread.

At 17, Jurassic Park took that curiosity somewhere else entirely. The idea of filling gaps in dinosaur DNA with frog DNA absolutely stoked me. I started reading my cytology book properly and then raiding Dad’s zoology books. He was a zoology professor, so there was plenty to raid.

Fast forward a few decades and I am an IT worker, drowning in meetings and droning on about product features, while quietly collecting a rather ridiculous number of fascinating books on genetics.

Apparently, the double helix survived Class 7 even if my attention span didn’t.
Perhaps someday I’ll escape the meetings, settle down somewhere, and do a proper repeat of Mendel’s experiments.