The genetics of popcorn eating

Question: How do you eat popcorn?
Do you eat it like a debutante, picking one piece at a time off the pile and carefully poking it into your mouth?
Or do you grab a big handful of it and shove it in like it's the last food you're ever going to eat?
Or maybe you're somewhere in the middle and you grab just a couple of pieces and eat them as a respectable human being would.
Unfortunately, I fall into the second category. My dad, who loves popcorn, always ate it that way and, naturally, I followed in his footsteps.
The other day I was watching a movie on Netflix, so I threw some popcorn in the microwave. Nothing like a nice warm bowl of popcorn to enhance the movie-watching experience, right?


After a few minutes, I looked down and noticed these popcorn bits all over my shirt. Yikes! I mean, shoot, I already knew I wasn't the daintiest popcorn eater in the world, but even I was a little shocked to see the mess I'd made.
For giggles, I sent a text to my college-student daughter, saying something like "How long have I been eating popcorn like I slob? I just ate bowl of it and, like, half of it's on my shirt."
Minutes later I got a text back saying, "I do the same thing. It's sooooo embarrassing :("
Great. Nice to know I've passed on the eat-popcorn-like-a-hungry-chimpanzee gene.
The day after Christmas, my wife and daughter decided to have a "girls night in" and watch a few movies. Of course if there's going to be a "girls night in" that means there needs to be a "boys night out."
So my teenage son and I decided to go see a movie at the local megaplex.

A little leftover popcorn from our movie trip

(We saw "We Bought a Zoo." Short of giving a full-fledged review, I'll say it was a very nice movie. An excellent father-and-son flick.)
Obviously, we bought a giant bag of popcorn at the concession counter before the movie. The problem was, we got there a good 15 minutes early and by the time the "coming attractions" even started, we'd pretty much gorged ourselves on that delicious, buttery movie theatre popcorn.
Worse still, I had time to look over and see my son shoving the stuff in his mouth, just like his old man. There were crumbs everywhere.
I self-consciously looked around to see if any of the other moviegoers were staring at us or perhaps even taking some secret cell phone video to upload to YouTube under the heading "Must see: Dad and son inhale a bag of popcorn!"
As near as I could tell, nobody noticed.
But I did and it made me chuckle as I realized just how much we, as parents, pass on to our children. Everything from hair and eye color, to body-type and speech patterns, all the way down to thought processes, coordination and, yes, even popcorn eating.
What they don't inherit genetically, they learn by simply watching us as they grow. This is a truly mind-boggling phenomenon, partly because its affects are so far-reaching and partly because of the deep sense of responsibility it creates in parents.