Drabble by Kevin Fagan for May 06, 2013

:-) These guys are so cute….hopefully this looks like norelation, right? Or so far removed it doesn’t matter?

I believe that they are not related. Better goget that bouquet, Echo. :-)

That’s two in-law steps, meaning they’re NOT blood related.

“I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former room-mate.”

“Yeahhhhh~!”

Naaaaw, they’re good.

Safe!

So she’s related to Kevin Bacon . . . ☻

I am worried that those two are too much alike. They have to be from the same gene pool. There couldn’t be two that much alike by coincidence. (Could there?)

Not to worry Norman, when they start this stuff it always goes right over my head. Just like math.

I’m My Own Grandpa(By Dwight B. Latham and Moe Jaffee)

Many many years ago,When I was 23,I was married to a widowAs pretty as can be.

This widow had a grown-up daughterWho had hair of red.My father fell in love with herAnd soon the two were wed.

This made my dad my son-in-lawAnd changed my very life.For my daughter was my mother,For she was my father’s wife.

To complicate the matter,Even though it brought me joy,I soon became the fatherOf a bouncing baby boy.

My little baby thus becameA brother-in-law to dad,And so became my uncle,Though it made me very sad.

For if he was my uncle,Then that also made him brotherTo the widow’s grown-up daughter,Who of course was my stepmother.

Father’s wife then had a sonWho kept him on the run,And he became my grandchildFor he was my daughter’s son.

My wife is now my mother’s motherAnd it makes me blue.Because although she is my wife,She’s my grandmother too!

Oh, if my wife’s my grandmotherThen I am her grandchild,And every time I think of itIt nearly drives me wild.

For now I have becomeThe strangest case you ever saw.As the husband of my grandmotherI am my own grandpa.

“Once removed” means you’re not related through that gene-line.

They were unrelated at the half-sister part

If the bride is his first cousin, then the first reveal “Poopsie’s second cousin’s …” is sufficient for genetic diversity.

But, even given that, if the bride is related to Norman through his mother, he could be more closely related to Norma/Echo through his father (and vice versa).

Saying “we are unrelated” is really saying “we are not closely related”, because we are all related in one way or another. The relationship may be 42nd cousin, twice removed, but it still means we are “related”, however distantly.

Second cousin’s half-sister is enough right there. I have a second cousin who is the daughter of my mother’s female cousin. Her half-sister would be a child of her father, not her mother – otherwise she’d also be my second cousin, not described as a half-sister.

I’m with Norm, that was just mostly more confusion.

But yes, clear enough to suggest the relation is probably a distant one at best. They’re not out of the woods yet supposedly, but there’s hope.

Good, because I actually like these two together, and really, who else could they end up with in the end anyway?

A wedding guest protesting her seating: “I’m on the groom’s side.” Usher: “Madam, there will be no partizan cheering at this wedding.”

No one would EVER go to a wedding for that distant of a relative.

Poopsie’s Second Cousin’s Half-Sister is still Poopsie’s Second Cousin from Poopsie’s perspective.…The only distinction that “Half-Sister” has here is that this relative of Poopsie’s does not have the same parents that the other Second Cousin has.…So at that point, Echo shares only 1/4th of the DNA with the Second Cousin, and since the Half-Sister has one different parent from the Second Cousin, then that shared DNA with Echo is half of 1/4th, meaning that it is 1/8th at that point.…Step-Niece means that this person was otherwise unrelated until the Second Cousin’s Half-Sister’s sibling, who is also Echo’s Second Cousin from Echo’s perspective, married the niece’s parent—once again, either 1/4th or 1/8th of that person’s DNA is shared with Echo.…Step-Niece’s Brother-In-Law, means that this is the brother of the person married to Echo’s Second-Cousin, regardless if that second cousin was born to the cousin’s first spouse or second spouse—at that point, no DNA is common to Echo here, the tie is only through the second-cousin’s marriage and their Step-Niece.…Step-Niece’s Brother-In Law’s Aunt may mean that the tie Echo shares to Poopsie is actually through the Second Cousin’s Step-Niece’s marriage and not to any blood tie—so no shared DNA between Echo, here.…Second Cousin’s Step-Niece’s Brother-In-Law’s Aunt’s Third Husband’s Son-In-Law basically means that the Aunt to the Step-Niece’s Brother-In-Law married into another family where the husband already had children and that one of them—a daughter—married a husband and that became the Third Husband’s Son-In-Law—meaning that the Aunt here married into that family—no blood ties to Echo, there, Either.…And since this Son-In-Law’s Nephew’s cousin is involved, it means that another marriage tie to the family is Echo’s relative—not blood or DNA tie.…What does not make sense here, is having a cousin that is “once removed” because cousins by their very definition can be no closer to the common shared ancestor than two generations, which makes them twice-removed and from that point, even greater, because the common ancestor that first cousins share is their common grandparents.…Second cousins is about perspective—the common ancestor to the first cousins is their grandparents on that side of the family while one first cousin still has that tie to the grandparent, the cousin’s offsprings’ tie to those common ancestors is then the great-grandparents on that side of the family, because the second cousins’ grandparents are one of the first cousins parents, who may be the aunt or uncle in the first cousin’s perspective.…From my perspective, the only time I deal with second cousins starts when my grandparents welcome in great-grandchildren, because their grandchildren, myself included, are either siblings or first cousins depending on who their parents are in relation to me, meaning that we are twice-removed from our common ancestors—the pair of grandparents that we share.…My siblings have the same parents I have, but children born to my parents’ siblings—whom I know as my aunts and uncles—are my cousins and by definition, all of us in this generation are twice removed from our common ancestor while one of our parents is only once removed from those common ancestors.…My second cousins are children born to my cousins.…However, any relation that those second cousins have to my children are the same to our common ancestor, my grandparents and from that perspective, they are “cousins-thrice removed” because all of them are great-grand-children to my grandparents, whereas me and my siblings and cousins are just grandchildren to them.…And in successive generations is where things usually get convoluted.

Ha! Put THAT in your smoke and pipe it!Er, I mean, Put that in your and pipe smoke… er, .. smoke your pipe, uh, uhhhh…

In my case, it doesn’t take much …

Good heavens, that must be one whopping big guest list.