‘I am your father …’

While I was preparing another post (which I might complete some time soon), its topic brought to mind the line in the movie Space Balls, when Dark Helmet (the parody version of Star Wars’ Darth Vader) says to  Lone Starr (ditto Luke Skywalker) ‘I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate’. The simplest interpretation is that your father’s brother’s nephew is you, and you may easily have met your cousin’s roommate. The next is that your father’s brother’s nephew is your cousin, and his cousin is you; you have certainly met your own roommate. Either way, you, your father, his brother, his nephew and his cousin are all in the same gene pool. But the nephew could be by marriage (your spouse’s sibling’s son) and/or the cousin could be through his other parent; either way the chain of relationships is not all that long. I can trace my brother-in-law’s brother-in-law’s cousin’s step-mother.
One thing, though – Dark Helmet probably wouldn’t say ‘I am the former roommate of the cousin of the nephew of the brother of your father’, and I probably wouldn’t say ‘The mother-in-law of the cousin of the brother-in-law of my brother-in-law’.

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