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I stand on a wobbly stool in the pathology laboratory and aim an eyedropper full of cells at a glass slide on the counter below.  The first two drops miss.  The third hits the slide, splitting open the cells and scattering twenty-three pairs of chromosomes.  I stain them with dye to produce the characteristic banding pattern of the underlying genes. 

As a pathologist, I would normally cut out the individual chromosomes from a photograph and organize them in pairs according to size, do a quick head count to verify all are accounted for and then pore over them to detect any abnormal banding pattern suggesting an evil gene.  But this is of no concern with this sample.  This is my vanity project; these are my chromosomes.  I want to see the distillation of my ancestry, the underlying engine that keeps life humming along. 

I don’t cut up my photograph, wrangle my chromosomes into a genetic version of a police line-up.  I leave them just as they land.  As a group, they look like an aerial view of a joyful dance floor.  At the picture’s center, chromosome 9 is bent at the waist, tapping the shoulder, and cutting in on chromosome 2.  Perhaps chromosome 12 is eagerly seeking her better half, isolated at the other side of the dance floor, obscured by a smear of blood.  I am proud of my two stalwart X chromosomes.  One is cozied up against the stubbier chromosome 7, the other next to the willowy chromosome 6. 

My photograph captures my chromosomes as they prepare to divide, duplicated and tightly coiled, ready to be yanked apart when the cell splits into two.  Uncoiled and relaxed in their new cells, they devolve into a gossamer network of filaments studded with genes, bathed in a nurturing cellular soup.  I picture my genes pulsing and thrumming as they direct scuttling messengers, marshal forces, build proteins and fend off attacks. 

My ancestors have bequeathed me this shimmering array of genes.  The solemn portraits of my triple great grandparents, Nancy and Henry, hang in my dining room. Maybe my genes have gotten a bit dinged up through five generations and trillions of divisions, but 1/32^nd of my genetic material can be traced back to these people.  How can I connect my chromosomes to this couple, two pioneers who stowed all their possessions in a wagon and headed from upstate New York to a one room house in western Illinois?  How are their genes playing out in my comfortable suburban life? 

I imagine Henry as an expert marksman, relying on his innate hand-eye coordination to bring down a grouse or dove to feed his family.  Have I repurposed this talent into my blistering forehand on the tennis court?  Perhaps Nancy was an expert tracker in the woods, able to spot a freshly broken twig or a blurred paw print, guiding Henry to the wolf that had devastated their chicken coop.   Did I repurpose this gene for pattern recognition into a career as a pathologist, scanning swaths of cells to deftly pick out the rogues? 

Is there more in my primordial ooze that has lain fallow all these years?  Maybe that bleb on chromosome 5, or that little satellite waving atop chromosome 12, remnants of Henry and Nancy’s inheritance that I have not nurtured.  I consider my recent interest in public story-telling, an activity that I never would have considered for myself.  Me, speaking in front of strangers? At bars?  No, never.  But there I stand, microphone in hand.  Maybe I am belatedly channeling Henry, tapping into his talents.  I imagine him attending the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debate in nearby Freeport, Illinois. On his return he entertained his neighbors with colorful stories, including, he claimed without corroboration, an uncanny imitation of Lincoln’s voice and mannerisms. Perhaps Henry became a well-known raconteur, recognized at church picnics and county fairs.  Am I walking in his footsteps?  Once someone in the grocery store recognized me as a story-teller, and then again at a quilting convention. 

I stand in front of Henry and Nancy with my photograph, pondering hidden talents and untapped potential.  The picture has traveled with me for forty years, from city to suburbs, from apartment to house, from fridge to office.  It is a snapshot of an old friend, a touchstone, a story prompt.  Thirty-five years ago, and then again thirty-one years ago, I was proud to bequeath half of my genes, 1/64^th of Heny and Nancy’s, to my two children.

My husband enjoys weekend pick-up hockey games at the community rink.  He often comes home with stories of Joe, who is simultaneously the most enthusiastic player and the most inept player ever to grace the ice. His transition from forward to backward skating, which should be second nature to even a marginal hockey player, is labored and dangerously herky jerky.  He is epically slow.

The game is noncompetitive with only a vague idea of the score.  Exercise, camaraderie, and the joy of the game are the driving forces.  However, Nick and I often discuss how people can enjoy something that they are so spectacularly bad at.  Ineptitude cannot be hidden on the ice.  Passes go awry, Joe might slip and fall, goals are scored in a flurry when he is on the ice.  Yet he persists, always the first to show up.  I envision a spectrum of athletic competence with total ineptitude anchoring the left end and elite world class athlete on the far right.  Nick and I are both comfortable with our spot on this scale, perhaps a skosh to the right of the midpoint of pedestrian competence.  Joe is mired deep into the left side of the scale.  Doesn’t he realize this?

Perhaps pick up hockey is his first judgment-free sports experience, his only opportunity to enjoy the embrace of a team. Now in his sixties, he presumably grew up in an era where boys’ athleticism was the gateway to coolness and popularity, both amongst his peers and the girls in his grade school.  How many times must he have endured the humiliation of being the last one picked?  There is no judgment in Nick’s pick-up league.  Everyone enjoys Joe, agrees he is a great guy and welcomes his presence.  Can that be enough?

Yes maybe, but the question still remains.

How can you enjoy something you stink at?

Could the Kruger Dunning effect be in play here?

In 1999, the psychologists Kruger and Dunning published a seminal paper titled, “Unskilled and Unaware of it:  How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessment.”

Their premise describes a vicious circle, “Not only do [the incompetent] reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it … In short, the same knowledge that underlies the ability to produce correct judgment is also the knowledge that underlies the ability to recognize correct judgment.  To lack the former is to be deficient in the latter.”

I shuddered when I read this.  Where have I been deluding myself?  Have I been blithely pursuing something I stink at?

Music comes to mind.  It formed the core of my mother’s identity.  My siblings inherited her gift, and I assumed that I shared this birthright.   I ignored the steady signals that emerged in grade school.  At try-outs for the grade school choir the director interrupted my singing after only a few bars.  My delusional interpretation was that my musical talent was so transcendent that further performance was redundant.  I was astonished to be omitted from the choir list, publicly posted on the hall bulletin board.  Redemption came when I was assigned to the chorus in the 8th grade play, though I did not realize this was merely damage control.  My lack of dramatic talent superseded my dismal musical talent.   One year when I was Christmas caroling, I was pointedly asked not to sing, but I brushed this aside as difficulty hearing the melody in the breezy outdoors.

In seventh grade I was pleased to join the school band as a clarinetist, ignoring the fact that there were no try-outs.  When I got to high school, the band director gently told me there were no openings for clarinetists in the chamber music group, which I rationalized as having to wait my turn as an underclasswoman.

I set aside any musical ambitions throughout college, medical school and into early child-rearing years.  But lurking in the back of my mind was the desire to enjoy music along with the rest of my family.  I was in the same position as Joe the wannabee hockey player.

A carillon bell choir offered an opportunity.  I thrilled to the idea that I would only be responsible for only four notes, the remaining 84 were someone else’s problem.    Surely this could be doable, like asking a hockey player to cover only 1/22nd of the ice.  Even better the director assigned me the lower bells, which absorb more errors than the tuneful higher bells.  Another example of a damage control strategy that I ignored.

I color coded my notes and then counted like a fiend to ring my bell at the appropriate moment.  What I didn’t realize was that there is a difference between steadfast counting and rhythm – actually it is a chasm of a difference.  I thought I had nailed it but truthfully, I wouldn’t be able to tell if I was off a fraction of a beat, a particular challenge for dotted sixteenth notes.  A showcase for Kruger and Dunning’s circular theory.  I lacked the skills to recognize my lack of skill.

Despite my marginal abilities, the choir welcomed me, in part due to nostalgia.  My mother had formed the original bell choir.  Besides, they were short players.  I did nurture my one useful talent.  I could recognize when I was totally off, for example if I inadvertently turned two pages of the score instead of one.  I would quietly set the bells down and wait for the choir director to whisper the measure number to get back on track.  The absence of sound, even a gaping hole, is more pleasing that a discordant and wincing wrong note.

I knew I wasn’t the best, but thought I had a niche, contributing more than just showing up.  Everyone else made mistakes, didn’t they?  Most mistakes went unnoticed, didn’t they?  Classic Kruger and Dunning.

I enjoyed the camaraderie of the choir, which is essentially a team sport, everyone pulling together for a common goal.  One day, Nancy, who is an elite musician (for starters she knows the names of all the notes), mentioned that another bell choir was short a player and would anyone like to sub in?  I volunteered.  Nancy said thanks but no thanks, implying that she would rather go without than have me, but I carry on.  The bell choir is kind.  They have never fired anyone.

Kruger and Dunning acknowledge that training can overcome the lack of insight, though they also note that “even if people received feedback that point to a lack of skill, they may attribute it to some other factor.”  I have had a lifetime of both subtle and very pointed negative feedback that have left me bowed but not broken.

I envision another spectrum, one focusing on the psychological underpinnings of incompetence.  Anchoring the left end is the Kruger and Dunning effect, jokingly referred to as a “mountain of stupidity,” i.e. that you are so stupid you don’t even know you’re stupid.  At the right end of the spectrum is a brutally honest and unbiased self-assessment, a status rarely achieved.  The midpoint is willful ignorance and a thick skin.  That’s where my musical abilities lie.  Maybe Nancy has nudged me a skosh to the right towards reality, but I’m not budging another inch since a sobering self-assessment would kill my enthusiasm for bell ringing.   I’m grateful for the psychological contortions that have allowed me to reside here.  On the other hand, Joe’s hockey ability must lie at least a skosh or two to the delusional left.   I maintain that I am a better bell player than he is hockey player.  Regardless, we have both found ways to enjoy what we’re no good at.

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