Bad Aunt, No Auction

[ellenkushner]

. . . . but I can fix that! My Virtual Nephew (actually my first cousin's son) Jonathan's school is having an online auction to raise money for, well, the school . It's mostly New York stuff like restaurant Gift Certificates, but there's jewelry and stuff, too. My Cousin Susan (his actual aunt) threw in one of her lovely stone necklaces. (Just don't bid on the Citarella basket, 'cause I want that.)

I am officially spreading the word here, as a good aunt should.

Comments

[lynn-maudlin.livejournal.com]

If Jonathan is your first cousin's son, he is your first cousin once removed. Your offspring would be his second cousin. But it's perfectly fine for him to be your Virtual Nephew, a good title and better, it offers a more comprehensive sense of what your relationship actually entails rather than "my first cousin once removed" (which could be a person of 80 years or an infant - it doesn't describe relationship but simply the bloodline).

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

I know, I know . . . we're a smallish family, and he's in the generation of my only other (2) nephews, so my relationship with him is Auntular. But I hate to mislead folks.

[lynn-maudlin.livejournal.com]

I never know; so many people don't know how the ladder of cousins/removals work. My mom was at a big family reunion on my dad's side and she made nametags for everyone that defined their relationship to a particular ancestor - people were fascinated, like it was some arcane knowledge!

I relate to the "misleading" thing - it's very hard for me to not be strictly factual, you know? A limitation in many ways. Perhaps that's why I like writing songs, I can employ a persona when writing a song... {{grin}}

[jaidit.livejournal.com]

At my grandmother's funeral, I spent a some time explaining that very thing. As a kid, I had been told that my great-aunt's children were my second cousins. Nope. Their children are my second cousins.

For the lunch after the funeral, I printed out a genealogy chart of my great-grandmother's descendants (since I knew that people at the funeral would include my grandmother's sisters (my great-aunt Barbara was born nineteen years after my grandmother) and my grandmother's nephews and nieces.

We had five generations of the family there.