Sir Francis Drake, For Goodness Sake

A poem about...

I met a self-important man,
Who stridently contended,
That directly from Sir Francis Drake,
He was most certainly descended.

“He who sank the great Armada,
And beat the King of Spain,
Yes that noble seaman Francis Drake,
His blood runs through my veins.”

“Hold on!” I said, “You may descend,
From that Elizabethan hero,
But I will show you with some Math,
Your relationship is zero.”

“You have 2 parents, 4 grand-parents,
8 great-grandparents, too,
Each generation’s twice as big,
You simply times by 2.”

“So 18 generations back,
In the 16th Century,
Over 200,000 folk,
Are in your family tree.”

“From most of those old ancestors,
You've not a single gene, today,
Because there’s only 20,000 genes,
In human DNA.”

“Perhaps you are related,
To the great Sir Francis Drake,
But the relationship is miniscule,
So shut up, for goodness sake.”