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September 29, 2004
Tangled Connections
I was only partially kidding when I used to say that we moved to Fayetteville so my kids could date someone who wasn't their cousin. But we have relatives all over the state, and we're always finding new kinfolk around....and now so is the SIL.
He just discovered in the last week or so that his best friend's girlfriend is the daughter of one of my first cousin's on my dad's side of the family. And yesterday he found out that his boss is a distant cousin of mine on my mom's side....his boss' dad is the district court judge for whom my sis works in the county I'm from.
Life's funny like that, isn't it?
Posted by Rita at September 29, 2004 08:29 PM
Comments
Holy cow -- could you diagram that?!
Posted by: david at September 30, 2004 08:43 AM
Sure, that's an easy one. One I wouldn't want to diagram is a familial relationship my first husband's cousin & I once figured out. Took us an hour or two to untangle everything, but we finally determined that, if rumors of certain extramarital affairs were true, my first husband's half-brother was his own uncle.
I believe they needed a few more branches on that family tree.
Posted by: rita at September 30, 2004 09:16 AM
Rita, you are doing nothing to advance the "Arkansas Is Not Full Of Hicks" cause with this post!
Posted by: david at September 30, 2004 09:55 AM
Heh. That's true.
If I remember correctly, the 'he's his own uncle' relationship was caused by a marriage between two people who didn't know they were related because of one or more of their parents' extramarital affair(s). Which to be fair, could happen anywhere. It's just more likely in a small insular community, where such things are kept secret....and denied to the bitter end by the ones involved.
A perfect example of this is a couple of my first cousins who really aren't my cousins at all. A)They were each born during periods when my uncle had been at sea (Navy) for more than a year; B)They look nothing like any of the rest of their siblings or any of us, but remarkably like their rumored father.
They're still family as far as I'm concerned and treated as such by the rest of the family, but in reality I could've legally married either of them if I wanted. Not that I did, but I could've.
Posted by: rita at September 30, 2004 10:16 AM
You're making my head hurt.
Posted by: Keith at September 30, 2004 02:27 PM