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Post by cokiemason on Dec 18, 2008 14:08:18 GMT -5
So, I grew up in a really small town... everyone is related. Not like, EVERYONE... But most people have their immediate family, cousins and whatnot in the town too. It always baffled me how no one in Stoneybrook seemed to have cousins, or cousins were such an unheard of thing... Like when Karen doesn't meet her cousins til she's SEVEN? Really? My cousin is my best friend! Did anyone else find it weird how no one in the books was related? I think it would have been hilarious to have, say, Alan Gray and Alexander Kurtzman cousins Or Heather and Shira Epstein... why not make them sisters?
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Post by featherearrings on Dec 18, 2008 18:47:31 GMT -5
I never thought it all that weird. Most of my cousins live out of town. My cousin was my best friend growing up too. She has 5 brothers and sisters and they were my only local cousins for the most part. I thought it was more weird that there were so many only children. Everyone I knew had siblings!
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Post by booboobrewer on Dec 18, 2008 21:08:40 GMT -5
I assumed Heather and Shira were sisters, even if it wasn't mentioned.
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Post by baseballchica03 on Dec 18, 2008 21:19:25 GMT -5
I don't see my cousins all that often, but we live in a decently sized city and grew up spread out in various suburbs at opposite ends. It's a good point, though, that in a small town you'd think more people might be related to one another.
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Post by cokiemason on Dec 18, 2008 22:42:50 GMT -5
The only children is a good point too... Off the top of my head, I can think of one girl who was an only child. And yeah, booboo... me too
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Post by toshemeup on Dec 19, 2008 5:42:18 GMT -5
I grew up in a small town, kind of like Stoneybrook. There weren't a lot of people related to each other. But right next door, in a slightly larger city, you couldn't walk out of the house without bumping into a cousin.
Not one of my friends was an only child, either. We didn't have many of those.
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Post by sparklymouse on Dec 19, 2008 13:11:53 GMT -5
Lots of my friends were only children, which I thought was weird then and still do now. We also had lots of relatives/cousins in my school. It was funny cause some were very close friends and some pretended they didn't know each other. My parents moved us out of their home state when I was a toddler so I have never lived close to any of my relatives. I saw them maybe twice a year. I was a little jealous of kids who could stop by their grandparents' house whenever they wanted to, but at the same time I can't even image living in the same town as my relatives.
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Post by otempora541 on Dec 19, 2008 13:23:35 GMT -5
Their cousins could be in other states or cities. I'm an only child, but my girl cousin is 10 today and her brother will be a year old in January. So Karen meeting her cousin at seven to me isn't surprising.
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Post by greer on Dec 19, 2008 14:55:00 GMT -5
The only people I knew who had cousins nearby were kids at my boarding school whose families had been going there for over a hundred years. And not all the cousins' families lived in the area, they just went to my school and lived there.
And I have never ever met any of my father's siblings. Nor have I ever met their children. All families are different.
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wanderingfrog
Sitting For The Arnolds
Official BSC Archivist
Posts: 2,552
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Post by wanderingfrog on Dec 19, 2008 18:13:38 GMT -5
I had cousins living near me, but all of them were older than me so it wasn't like we hung out. And some of them lived really near me -- the backyard of one of my mom's brothers faced our backyard. One of his daughters was actually the person who baby-sat me the most.
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fluffycakes
Junior Sitter
A silken-haired beauty with a laugh like pealing bells
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Post by fluffycakes on Dec 20, 2008 11:42:52 GMT -5
If I recall correctly, Claudia is the only one with relatives near by. Maybe Mal does too - Uncle Joe - but I got the feeling that he didn't live in Stoneybrook until he moved into Stoneybrook Manor. I don't find it too weird that many had relatives living far away. On my dad's side of the family, many of my cousins live like 10 minutes away, but we never see them. We get along much better with my mom's side and see them much more often, even though they're farther away. That's awesome that your cousin is your best friend, cokiemason. The cousin closest in age to me is five years younger. 18 and 23 is a big difference. We get along great and always have fun together, but it's just a bit too much of an age difference to be best friends. Maybe when we're older that'll change!
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Post by cokiemason on Dec 20, 2008 15:43:59 GMT -5
Yeah, I don't know... to me it's just weird. I can't count the number of times my mom has said, oh, so and so's mom is so and so's sister" And I most likely went to school with both so-and-so's In my town, there's about 6 HUGE families, they were pretty much the first people here... so everyone has kind of branched from them. It sounnds so hillbilly, redneck but its not (okay, it is) I guess I just think all small towns are like that!
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nothingtolose18
Sitting For The Johanssens
Mal / Sam / Price / Ben
Posts: 1,059
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Post by nothingtolose18 on Dec 20, 2008 16:21:00 GMT -5
^ LOL, I totally understand what you mean, but then again, I grew up in the sticks haha, so yeah. But yeah, my parents are always saying 'Bob is brothers with John and his sister is Kim' (haha, random names lol). As for me, I have a million bajillion cousins (well, quite a few. Haha). My dad has 11 sisters and one brother, and most of them have at least one kid, so yeah. The town I grew up in is the town where my dad grew up, too, so most of his siblings live not too far away, so I saw most of my paternal cousins all the time growing up. Plus, most of them are around my age (I'd say about 5 or 6 of them, give or take a couple years). But my mom's family isn't from here (not too far away, but most of her sisters and brothers [4 each] live away, anyway), so I don't really know my cousins on my mom's side too well. Also, my mom is the youngest child in her family, and her siblings started having kids early, and Mom didn't have me till late, so most of my cousins on that side are much, much older than me (Mom became an aunt when she was 6!
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Post by Kylie90210 on Jan 5, 2009 21:26:15 GMT -5
Thats crazy cool I have 8 cousins in total (only two my age), and another about to be born. I am the oldest of all my cousins, paternal and maternal. I am really close to the two cousins my age, as is my sister, even though they don't live near us.
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Post by wenonah4th on Jan 6, 2009 6:28:33 GMT -5
I've got ten first cousins in total (of whom I'm also the oldest); the ones I'm close to are stairstep girls several years my junior. No siblings of my own.
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