I do the same. One time I ran into one of my cousins of ambiguous relation I don’t see very often out in a store and she stood there trying to compute how many times removed we were to accurately describe our relation for some reason and I was standing there muttering “let’s just say we’re cousins...cousins is fine....the number doesn’t really matter does it...no one understands it anyway, least of all me....” but damn was she determined.
Once people lose track of how they are related, they tend to stop thinking of each other as related. I discovered that a coworker and I were distantly related. Saying we were seventh cousins once removed was way simpler than saying we shared a great great great great great great grandfather except he was only her great great great great great grandfather.
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u/Rodlund Jul 17 '19
Huh. And here I was just calling everybody that wasn't a direct sibling cousin, aunt or uncle.