Rob Knight

What will they look like?

June 15, 2006

Tonight I had a what will our children look like discussion with my wife. You know you've had them. This one came up because my wife's side of the family have a propensity to develop an under-bite during puberty. That is when your lower jaw does a bit too much growing and sticks out further than your upper jaw. It messes up your bite and your teeth no longer line up correctly. For my wife, this resulted in the need for surgery when she was 17. Now, two other members of her extended family may need the same corrective surgery and so we started on the topic of what our children will look like when we have them...someday.

If you know what I look like, you can see where I'm going with this. Having what some have referred to as a "Jay Leno" chin and prominent nose, I realized that I can only add to the under-bite problem that dwells within my wife's DNA.

Here, in no particular order, is the list of the worst we can expect for our children's features:

  • prominent chin
  • prominent nose
  • thick brow
  • bushy eyebrows
  • moles, many moles
  • a bump on the nose
  • thin hair

Needless to say, it is quite possible that my wife and I could bear a child that carries a club and hunts mammoths. That is a worst case scenario of course. The child has a 50/50 chance of having real good eyesight. I have good vision. My wife though, is blind as a bat without assistance so it could go either way.

We have a few years to wait before we create our adorable Neanderthal, but it is fun to joke about what kind of mutant we will bear. Maybe thinking about a hairy, mole-covered, big-chinned, nearly blind, big-nosed mutant child will make the wait not seem so long.

Update: maybe they're not as screwed as I thought. :-)