Never too old to have a baby in Laos

I knew that Lao people, especially Hmong, have large families. What I didn't know is that the secret is that their fertile years extend far beyond that which we mere mortals previously thought possible.

Case in point.

Two people came to apply for visas today.

Person #1, Male, born 1968.

Person #2, Female, born 1942.

Person #1 was going to his sister's funeral. Person #2 was going to her mother's funeral. The deceased in both cases was the same person.

So let's assume person #1's deceased sister is person #2's mother (which is what they said. I confirmed it twice) and do a little math.

Assume that person #2 was the deceased's eldest child, and that the deceased gave birth to person #2 when she was 12 years old (not out of the realm of possibility by any means). Therefore, the deceased would have been born in 1930, making her 38 years older than person #1, her supposed sibling.

Person #1 had the answer to that 38 year difference. He was the youngest child in the family. Okay, fine. Let's do another supposition and some math again. Assume again that person #1 and the deceased's mother had her first baby, the deceased, when she was 12. Then 38 years later, at age 50, she had person #1, her youngest. Okay, could be. Unlikely, but could be.

Then person #2 offered what was the coup de grace in this little interview. The deceased was 120 years old when she died. This means that the deceased was born in 1885, and was in actuality about 83 years older than person #1. This means that, assuming the deceased was the oldest child and person #1 was the youngest, their mother would have been at least 95 years old when she gave birth to person #1 (assuming the mother was 12 when she gave birth to the deceased). Now THAT is unlikely.

Follow all that?

Me neither.

On top of this, the people were not generally qualified for a visa anyway, I just thought it important to sort out the fact that the oldest living woman died recently in MN, and even more impressive, the oldest living woman's mother had given birth to a child when she was 95 years old. Someone call Alec Guinness, I hear he writes books about such things when he's not going to Star Wars fanfests*.


*yes, I know he's dead (I think he's dead).