Last night I had a first date.  The first 10 minutes had really awesome potential.  The conversation was on point, he was good looking, we were laughing, things were looking up.  Now, before I get into where shit went wrong, I have to talk about myself personally a bit.

I’m a mixed bag when it comes to my heritage.  My mom’s side is Western European: French, English, Belgian, etc.  My dad’s side is German, English, and Portuguese.  Mostly Portuguese.  My dad is half so therefore I’m a quarter.  But I’m so white I’m see through, so I don’t look Portugue at all.  All that Western European drowns out any color I might get, especially in January.

My Portuguese side has been in the SF Bay Area since the early 1900’s.  My great grandparents had a farm in south Fremont and so they had a few kids to help run it. When I say a few kids, I mean that my poor great grandmother was knocked up 13 times in 20 years.  THIRTEEN TIMES 😳  She was almost never not pregnant.  They had so many children, there were two sets of twins!  My grandfather was the last one so I’m glad she didn’t quit one kid early.

As you can imagine, being good Catholic farmers and all, my great aunts and uncles all had large broods of themselves.  For example my dad is one of 6.  Every year we have an annual family picnic.  There are so many of us that, one year, each sub family had to all wear colored shirts so people knew which clan you hailed from.  My grandfather was Art and all of Grandpa Art’s kin wore maroon shirts.  My Uncle Dan’s group had blue shirts, etc. 13 different colored shirt groups.  Good times.

Each year the picnic is held, the attendance is smaller and smaller.  I blame the matching shirts…  There is only one original “kid” holding the family all together, Uncle Lennie.  He is in his 80’s so  we all still gather for Uncle Lennie’s sake.  I’m pretty sure that after he passes *knock on wood* the picnic will become a distant memory.  It’s OK for my immediate family because we see some extended members almost weekly, we are that close.  Funny enough, they are the same people we hang out with when we go to the picnic.  Like all families, we definitely have some branches that need a trim, so we like to close ranks a bit at this event.  Anyway, I digress…

Now that you have a bit of cultural background on me, I can continue with the date that went south in a split second.  The conversation turned to camping and how badly I can sunburn while inner tubing on the American River in July.  How my Portuguese is suppressed by so much paleness that I burn to a crisp if I don’t slather myself in sunscreen on the hour.  It was the mention that I had some Portuguese in me that prompted my date to say, “Portuguese, eh? What’s your last name?”

I paused momentarily, mostly because I wasn’t sure I wanted to give this guy my last name yet.  I thought to myself, meh, it’s long and hard to pronounce, let alone spell correctly.  So I told him my last name.

He leaned back, laughed to himself and said the following…
…Wait for it…
“Well, you’re on a date with your cousin!”

My mouth dropped in horror!  I said, “SHUT UP! Is it spelled with an ‘e’ at the end!?!”  My great grandpa added the ‘e’ on the end when he immigrated from the Azores so anyone with an ‘e’ on the end is related to me.

He answered, “Yes, with the ‘e’.  I’m Belmeda’s great grandson.”

I remember Aunt Belmeda.  I can recall going to her house in Newark and that I liked visiting her.  She was the eldest of my great grandparent’s children.

1 universe, 9 planets, 204 countries, 7 billion people and I was on a date with a blood relative who was my 4th cousin.

We sat in shock, talking about the family.  Who we knew, drama, rumors, etc.  We ended up calling both parents to let them know what was going on.  My dad laughed his ass off.  My “date’s” grandmother was my dad’s godmother.

Part of the problem was that my cousin said he never goes to the family picnics.  I told him I’m making him go to the next one.  I also started showing him pictures of other single cousins of his, including my sister, so that he could avoid any potential “matches” in the future.

If this isn’t the piece de resistance of my dating life, I don’t know what is. I’ve definitely hit rock bottom here.  Not the way I wanted 2016 to start out but I guess there can be something to be said about making this discovery 10 minutes in.  MUCH better sooner than later with that tid bit of information.

I now have an AMAZING business proposition for EVERY dating app and Ancestry.com.  I think there is a missed opportunity if there isn’t a collaboration soon.  I mean, my cousin and I were a 91% match. Something is just very wrong about that!