We Are Family

Did it surprise anyone this week to learn that Dick Cheney and Barack Obama were eighth cousins? I think it’s interesting, but not all that surprising.

By the time you trace back that far each person alone has 512 great great great great great great great great grandparents. That is a lot of people and countless branches to be related to someone!

Have you ever found out you were related to someone you already know?

That’s happened to me twice, actually. Genealogy interests me and I did have a pretty comprehensive family tree completed on my mother’s side, except for one missing piece.

Since irony is the story of my life, this missing piece was filled in by someone I really hoped never to hear from again.

Long ago, my grandfather’s grandfather’s brother had a serious falling out with the family. So serious, in fact, that he completely disowned them and changed his name so as never to be associated with them again. I did know what that name was, but it was just far too common a name to extensively search and frankly, I’m wasn’t THAT interested to do all of that work.

Long story short, when I was a teenager, I had a stalker of sorts. I’m not sure anyone called anyone a stalker back then, though.

This guy that I worked with at a pharmacy (he was about 10 years older and the pharmacist) was insistent on dating me. I was not interested in him and all and being “jail bait” at the time, I thought his preoccupation with me was a little strange. He was always bringing me gifts, sending me flowers, happening to be in my neighborhood, showing up where I happened to be, etc. My mother told him if he didn’t back off she’d kill him at which point he asked her out. Weirdo.

Fortunately, for me, stalker found the woman of his dreams and continues to live happily ever after with her. Funny thing is, even I thought the girl he married reminded me of...well, me. Our co-workers teased me incessantly about this.

Skipping ahead, when the internet became readily available, I poked around a few genealogy sites and found a post by a woman whose last name was the same as the missing branches on my family tree and she was looking for people with my family surname. Goodness! I had to respond!

Her name was Ruth and I e-mailed her and we spoke a bit and determined we were third cousins. She came to one of my family reunions, satisfied her curiosity, I guess because I never saw or heard from her again.

A few years later, I get a phone call from....my stalker! Without even exchanging pleasantries, wants to know if a man named “Stanley X” is my grandfather.

Why is this idiot calling me and how did he get my unlisted phone number?

Stanley X was not my grandfather, but he was close. Stanley X’s brother, Dale, is my grandfather. Letting my curiosity get the better of me, I gave him this information.

He screamed “Oh MY God!” into the phone. I still had no idea why he wanted to know this.

He then told me that his wife, the one I always thought reminded me of me, is my third cousin.

How on earth did he figure that out?

Well, it turns out that while he was researching his wife’s lineage, he came across the X name. Ruth, the woman I met online and stalker’s wife are first cousins. When stalker asked Ruth if she knew anything about the “X” side of the family, to his utter shock, she gave him my name.

Stalker had accumulated a huge amount of information about my missing branches and he e-mailed me the entire list.

I quickly scanned it over and I was shocked to discover that I already knew somebody else on the list.

If you go back a couple of posts to my daughter’s Homecoming pictures, you will see a third girl in the pics I refer to as “Cousin K”. She is a close friend of Middle Daughter’s and when I first met her, I remarked out loud at how physically similar she looked to my kids.

Needless to say, it was K’s name that I discovered on the family tree. K was instantly promoted from being just a friend to a 5th cousin to my children. K’s father and I are fourth cousins.

I’m convinced this is why people sometimes see similarities between two apparently unrelated people. There’s probably some long lost relation between the two.

A few years ago, it was determined that mathematically, everyone on earth would find that they are directly descended from The Egyptian Queen, Nefertiti. Not only Nefertiti, but everyone in the world can supposedly trace a common ancestor to Confucius, as well.

If this is true, then somehow you are all related to me,The Rock Chick. We are family. This is something to celebrate, so....get up everybody and sing!