Family reunions: a time when people who largely don’t care at all about one another get together to pretend they don’t all hate each other’s guts and will temporarily try not to talk shit about the others (this will proceed immediately after), during which they all pretend to want to learn useless info about others and it’s always dominated by the most narcissistic of elderly who want to be listened to and hear their own voice a lot.
Cousin # = # of generations back to your shared direct ancestor - 1.
So if you share a grandparent (2 generations away), you're 1st cousins.
removed is how many generations away you are from each other.
So if your parent is first cousins with someone, you're first cousins once removed. You're second cousins to their kids. You're second cousins once removed to their children.
Your dad and his cousin share a set of grandparents. You and your dad’s cousin’s kid share a set of great-grandparents. That’s 3 generations up for both of you. So, 2nd cousins. No removed.
How about being born into a family, going through life and never having anyone tell you who is related to who, how and whatever family secrets that you shouldn’t take about.
Then get to 20 years of age and everyone treats you like an idiot for not knowing that aunt Margaret had a secret affair in 1975 had an illigitiment child who is your best friend, then she got married, divorced had three other children from different men and you always thought that their father died a long ago. No one talks about any of this but you are somehow supposed to know.
One of my favourite responses from family members goes something like … how did you not know that was your mothers, uncle, second cousin through marriage, stepson’s foster child? Don’t you even know your own family?
I have a ton of family in a variety of situations either through marriage, divorce, commonlaw, one night stands, rape, incest, undetermined, suspected, or just unknown … it’s also an Indigenous family so it gets weird sometimes when you have all brown family members and then an oddball white child that came out of left field, no explanation, no one talks about it, yet the white looking child is no different in culture and language than any of the rest of the family. I have two cousins who could pass off as completely white but their first language is Ojibway-Cree and they were born and raised like brown little old me.
And it gets hilariously insane quickly too … the whole family will complain about the indian-wanna-bes and pretendians … while our white looking cousins are sitting right next to us agreeing to everything we’re saying.
Families are weird … Native families are on another level
You think that’s confusing? Someone else from my Grandfather’s family, one of his cousins, married someone else from my Grandmother’s family, one of her cousins.
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