The first time somebody said ‘it’s all relative’ to me, I was wondering if he was referring to my entire family. It was only later that I learned the usage and meaning of the phrase. Relative is an adjective when considered in relation or in proportion to something. Usage of the phrase ‘it's all relative’ refers to the possibility of different vantage points and contexts. For example: to Bill Gates, $10,000 is nothing, but to a homeless person, it's a fortune. It's all relative, even though they are not even related!
Relative can also be a noun describing a person connected by blood or marriage. By marriage, the members of the extended side of the family become in-laws, so does that mean that the other side is filled with out-laws? All this can at times confuse the hell out of a person who uses English as his second language. Perhaps then it is possible that if ‘relative finder’ is a phrase used to search for persons that belong to your family, then ‘relative humidity’ must refer to somebody in the family voiding (as in peeing) in his pants, and ‘relative frequency’ is then referring to how often babies are born into the family! ‘Relative risk’must be describing when you marry somebody. You know your own side of the family, the out-laws, but you’re not sure what the in-laws are like. ‘Relative success’ then describes harmony between the out-laws and in-laws.
An old relative must be grandparents or great-grandparents, whereas a new relative would be a recently born baby. A family member in his or her late 40s or early 50s, however, is just a relative. And how is that relative to somebody outside the family? A modern family consists of a mother, father, sister(s) and brother(s), also referred to as parents and siblings, although they are all relatives. Some of them could be kindred spirits, like my deceased twin brother Kjell and I, and that’s relative because we were related. By way of popular definition, relatives are people who come to dinner who aren’t friends!
Some relatives have very quick minds. Take Lena and Ole. During a heated argument Lena said to Ole, “You hate my mother!”
Ole was very cool and calm and replied, “What? Because I like your mother-in-law more than mine?”
Ole’s son Sven was a quick witted person as well. Ole asked him, “Can I see your report card, Sven?”
“No, sorry Dad. I don’t have it,” replied Sven.
“Why not, son?” inquired Ole.
“I gave it to my cousin Knut because he wanted to scare my aunt and uncle!” replied Sven.
Sven asked his father during supper, “Dad, are flies good to eat?”
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Ole sternly. “That’s disgusting and not a fit topic to discuss during supper!” After supper Ole went into Sven’s room and asked, “Now Sven, what was it that you wanted to ask me about flies?”
“Oh, never mind,” said Sven, “there was a fly in your soup, but it’s gone now!”
Ole had asked his cousin Per to help him build a deck at his house after work, so Per drove to Ole’s place when he got off work, and arrived at the same time as Ole. When they went inside, Ole went straight to Lena, gave her a big hug and told her how beautiful she was and how much he had missed her while he was away at work.
Lena had supper ready for them and all three of them seated themselves around the table to eat while engaging in pleasant small talk, relatively speaking. After supper, Ole complimented Lena on her cooking, gave her a nice kiss and told her how much he loved her.
Once they were outside working on the deck, Per told Ole that he was very surprised that Ole fussed so much over his wife. Ole said to Per that he had started doing that about six months ago, after he and Lena had renewed their marriage vows, and now things couldn’t be better. Per had not complimented his wife Kari for a long time, and thought he would try the same approach.
When he got home late that evening, he gave his wife a big hug, kissed her and told her how much he loved her. Kari, bursting into tears, took a step back. Per got very confused and asked her why she was crying. Kari looked at him and said, “This is without doubt the worst day of my life! First, little Hans crashed his bike and broke his leg. Then while I’m taking him to the emergency, the pipe to the dish washer burst and flooded the main floor with water, which dripped onto the electrical panel in the basement, which shorted out the power and our phone line, so I couldn’t call a repair man and then you come home drunk!”
The relatives of a very prominent American family with Norwegian roots decided to give the old Norwegian patriarch a book with their family history. They hired a famous biographer, who after having done the research, warned them of one problem. Uncle Sven, the ‘black sheep’ of the family, had been found guilty of murder. He had been sent to Sing Sing where he was executed in the electric chair. The family didn’t want to upset the patriarch and asked the biographer to handle this sensitive information with great tact. The biographer wrote the following: “Uncle Sven occupied a chair of applied electronics at one of the nation’s leading institutions. He was attached to his position by the strongest of ties. His death came as a true shock!”
