Peanuts by Charles Schulz for December 26, 1993
Transcript:
Sally chews on her pencil as she writes a letter.<BR><BR> Charlie Brown is in a chair. He says, "What are you doing?"<BR><BR> Sally replies, "I'm writing a 'thank you' letter. What did I get from Gramma for Christmas?"<BR><BR> Charlie Brown says, "Which Gramma? You've got two of them."<BR><BR> Sally walks up to the chair holding a piece of paper. She says, "Maybe I'll write to Grampa. What did I get from Grampa?"<BR><BR> Charlie Brown says, "Which Grampa? You've got two of them."<BR><BR> Sally says, "What did I get from my aunt? Maybe I'll write a letter to my aunt..."<BR><BR> Charlie Brown looks down at his book and says, "Which Aunt? you've got five of them."<BR><BR> Sally walks away with her piece of paper.<BR><BR> Sally sits at the table with her letter and says, "What did I get from my third cousin once-removed?"<BR><BR>
Well, Sally, given that you have to jump back 5 generations of your family tree to even get to a third cousin once-removed, this provides much more opportunity for ‘spreading out’ as you go back down, which means you likely have even more of those than you do aunts, grammas, and grandpas combined.
In fact, if we assume both sets of great great great grandparents only had two kids, then their kids only had two kids, and so on, Sally would have 16 third cousins once-removed (and that is still assuming her third cousins haven’t had children yet, which would be even more).