My family tree is too confusing

By Staff
Scot Beard
I did not realize until recently how many members of my extended family my wife, Erin, had not met during the 6.5 years of our relationship.
She has met my mother, sister, both uncles on my mom's side of the family and a couple of cousins.
That does not seem bad, but my mom is one of 28 first cousins on her mom's side of the family.
When you take into account all of the children those cousins have had the idea of a family tree becomes laughable.
Actually, I don't think our family could accurately be mapped out with a tree. It couldn't be done with a grove.
It might be done with a forest, but I seriously doubt it.
During our relationship, Erin has heard several stories about our family, but has been unable to put faces to the names because there are not many family gatherings.
Rarely have all of the members of the family congregated together in one location at the same time – mainly because I think nobody can afford to rent the arena needed to accommodate such a massive gathering of humanity.
Last Thursday Erin had the opportunity to meet several members of my family when my great-uncle Bud passed away and some of the family gathered for the visitation.
I knew trying to keep the overall organization of the family was difficult, but I did not realize how confusing – thanks to nicknames – it could be for an outsider such as my wife.
For instance my great-uncle's name was actually Edward, but everybody knew him as Bud.
His sister had a son named William, who everybody in the family called Buddy.
Buddy had a son named William Jr., but became known as Little Buddy.
Erin kept asking if Bud was Little Buddy's father and I said, "No, Little Buddy is Bud's great-nephew and Big Buddy is Bud's nephew."
She met Tim – my mom's first cousin – who was called Timbo as he was growing up.
She also met his son, also named Tim – who is now called Timbo by most of the family while the original Timbo has now reverted back to Tim.
I thought her head was going to explode.
That is when I realized why the entire family is never together at the same time.
The human mind is only capable of handling so much information, and greeting so many people with similar names is sure to lead to a mental break down.
Like many other families, mine already has its quota of crazy people, so the family elders must have gotten together a long time ago and decided family reunions were a bad idea.
Erin, and her new headache, agrees.