CoSAS Syndrome

(A story of one man's shame)

This is a picture of my 3 children (pop quiz: Quickly now, which one do you think is adopted?). They appear to get along nicely, don't they? They even seem to be bonding well, although I am not sure if this is the shot where two of them got their braces caught in their brother's coat. But I digress.

These otherwise normal appearing children (2 of them, any way) have inherited CoSAS syndrome, transmitted by a sex-linked dominate gene. In other words, they got it from me.

For you non-geneticists, the full name is Cogenital Smart Ass Sarcasm Syndrome. It is surprisingly common, often goes undiagnosed and, therefor, untreated. It should be suspected to be present in children who exhibit smart talk, an ability to laugh at themselves and everyone else and the tendency to give shirts such as these on Father's Day.















CASE STUDY: Or how my wife, Linda, developed the original cure for this syndrome.

Go back about 16 years (before we adopted Ansel, the normal child). Back then, there was just Carri and her little sister Tammy. We were, we thought, a normal family...just like Ozzie and Harriet. Then it began, subtle at first, developing gradually until Linda and I had to face the reality that we (read I) had passed on the CoSAS gene. We should have seen it sooner, but at least we caught it early. Unfortunately, there was (at the time) no known cure.

I was wracked with shame. After all, I was the gene pool for this terrible affliction. More over, I was a doctor and should have known what to do. But alas, we sat, evening after evening, at the supper table while our daughters called each other Ass Holes. There, now you know. And, yes, it was the worst form of CoSAS...type III AH. What to do? Linda to the rescue.

She had her brother, a lawyer, draw up actual papers that were signed by a real judge (imagine what syndrome he had) officially renaming my precious offsprings AssHole #1 and AssHole #2. Armed and ready, we sat down to dinner. It didn't take long before the two potty-mouths started in.

It was at that historic moment that Linda whipped out the afore-mentioned papers and told those two that if we heard those words one more time the papers would be filed at the courthouse. From then on, she told them, they would carry those names like a scarlet letter and be called by those names by us, teachers and friends. We never heard them use those names again.








They continue to do well, although there are some minor clinical expressions of the genetic burden they carry. Now, Linda and I are off for gentic consultation. We can no longer live with the fear of not knowing the odds the gene being passed onto grandchildren.

Paddle safe...reproduce even safer.
DS