I am not my own grandpa

...but strange things do happen sometimes.

I know a father and son who married sisters. A couple of years after Lee Watson married Lois, his widowed father Gordon married Lois's older sister Lula. So Lee's stepmother was also his sister-in-law, and Lee was both Gordon's son and Gordon's nephew. Put another way, Gordon was both Lee's father and Lee's uncle. Lee and Lois had two sons, Billy and Gordon, whose aunt and uncle on their mother's side were their grandma and grandpa on their father's side. I would have found that very confusing.

Two of my stepmother's brothers, Russ Williams and Billy Williams, married women who were related to each other as aunt and niece. Dorothy Bridges Williams (Russ's wife) had a sister, Jewel Bridges Chumeley, whose daughter became Lawanda Chumeley Williams (Billy's wife). So Russ and Dorothy's daughter Carol was first cousin to Lawanda through her mother Dorothy, and she was also first cousin to Billy and Lewanda's children Barry, Connie, and Cindy through her father Russ. Otherwise they would have been her first cousins once removed, not her second cousins, which is something else entirely. Carol's children and Lawanda's children are second cousins. I hope I have made everything crystal clear.

My stepmother's two youngest siblings, Fred Williams and Sue Williams, had children who were what is called double first cousins because Fred married Martha Perry, and Sue married Jack Perry, Martha's brother. Normally, first cousins have three sets of grandparents between them with only one set in common. Double first cousins are different in that they have only two sets of grandparents between them, and they have both sets in common. I hope that makes sense.

Here's a bit of trivia. The television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart and the bad-boy rock star Jerry Lee Lewis (his hits included "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "Great Balls Of Fire"; he was married seven times including once to his 13-year-old first cousin, once removed) were double first cousins, which fact only serves to prove that every person's journey is unique and independent of supposed family influence.

Another bit of trivia: The younger Gordon Watson (that is, Lee's son, not Lee's father) whom you met in this post's opening paragraph was Vanna White's significant other for several years before she moved to California and began turning letters on Wheel Of Fortune. You won't learn this kind of stuff on anybody else's blog.

If you find information about unusual inter-personal relationships as fascinating as I do, I hope you will enjoy hearing Lonzo and Oscar singing "I'm My Own Grandpa" way back in 1947 (3:05).

If three things were different (that is, if Lee Watson had married Lula instead of Lois; if Lee's father had married Lois instead of Lula; and if Lula had been Lois's mother instead of her older sister, as she was certainly old enough to have been), my friend Lee Watson could have given Lonzo and Oscar a run for their money.

T.T.F.N.