Exclusively at Up Against the Wall

Yesterday, I fell into a migraine nap during a news bit on CRISPR. If you’ve ever heard any reporting on CRISPR,  you know it’s impossible to make it through a segment without this two word phrase which seems to haunt genetic research: DESIGNER BABIES (a concept so horrific it must be text yelled).

Doesn’t matter if the piece has zip to do with germ line editing, those babies will make their way into that story by gum! They are resilient. Presumably, they’ve been bred to be.

My migraine dreams are always a bit odd, and the news story infiltrated the narrative…
I was part of a Designer Baby research team. My role involved standing at a huge blackboard and completing the largest Punnet Square I’ve ever seen. I do love a good Punnet Square but this seemed excessive. I mean predicting the possible genetic traits of Designer Babies is no small task.

Ultimately my findings were that the Babies would be manufactured by Jordache and sold exclusively at Up Against the Wall. That last bit might require you to be of a certain age and have resided in a specific geographic location to have any meaning.

But hey, I hear there’s this super advanced abacus on which you can search for things. I personally have no experience with this apparatus, as Punnet Squares take up all my time. But if you have this awesome abacus, slide the doo hickies into whatever configuration results in Jordache jeans and Up Against the Wall stores and there you have a snippet of my youth.

A note re: Jordache designer jeans – they came with all manner of wild back pocket designs which my mom would not let me have. Mom was always denying me things: sugar, that stuffed animal horse head on a stick that would have vastly improved my play time circa age six. Her excuse regarding the jeans: the pockets were ugly

Retrospectively, she was not wrong. But at age 10, in the era of parachute pants (denied again by mom) those pockets looked really classy. That’s not to say I never got my Jordache designer jeans. I got them, a little horse head (nonstuffed) logo in the place of a tricolored butterfly. And yes I got them at Up Against the Wall.

Designer Babies and ridiculous migraine dreams aside, CRISPR has some really cool implications for somatic cell editing. Worthy of an abacus session.