So, remember this baby in the background of A Tale of Two Stans? Now, most people’s first guess is this is a baby Shermie, the Pines twin’s grandfather. However, some people say that he is too young to be Shermie. Now, let’s do some math.

First we need an age to work off of. Well in Dipper and Mabel vs the Future, Stan says this “I mean, look at me. I’m pushin’ seventy and I still eat ice cream for dinner.” Now, normally would round up to 70, reasoning that Stan’s birthday is just in a few months. However, the journal confirms that his birthday is June 16, so let’s just say he’s 69.





Now, the Stan twins would be 18 during their first fight. If we assume the baby is only a few months old, Shermie is 18 years younger than the Stan twins. That puts Shermie at 51 when the series takes place. Subtracting 12 from that gives us 39, Shermie’s age when the twins were born. Dividing that by 2, gives us 19.5, being both Shermie and the twins parents would be around 19 when they had their kids.





Now, that’s a bit young. That’s why some people have offered the interpretation that the baby is actually the Pines twin’s father, whom Ma Pines was babysitting. So, the twin’s dad would be 39 when they were born. That’s a bit old(if you assume their mom is of a similar age), however, maternal twins are more likely to be born from an older mother. The same thing applies to Ma Pines being older when she gave birth to the Stan Twins(the Stan twins aren’t identical twins, as cleft chins are determined by simple Mendelan genetics). Mutations(such as an extra finger) are also more likely.





However, even if the math checks out, Shermie being older(by about 10 years) than the Stan twins doesn’t check out logically. First off, the principal says “But hey, look on the bright side: at least you’ll have one son here in New Jersey forever.” Now, if Ma Pines was babysitting Shermie’s kid wouldn’t that mean Shermie was still in Glass Shard Beach. Well, what if he was visiting? Now, it was the Stan twin’s graduation, so he could of been visiting, but that opens a whole other can of worms.





If Shermie was older than Stan, why didn’t he help him? He didn’t seem to be present at the house during the fight, but if Shermie was older, shouldn’t Shermie of at least tried to help Stan, or shunned him just as much as Filbrick did. Even if Shermie thought he was inviting Ford to the twin’s birth, if Shermie didn’t try to help Stan, why would Stan let Shermie’s grandkids visit him when it could blow his cover if they had fought.





Now, that evidence is a little shaky. However, there is much more stable evidence for the Stan twins being older than Shermie. The journal says this about Stan’s fez “Dad’s hat! He never did tell us much about the “Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel”. So Stan’s fez seems to be some kind of Pines family heirloom(let’s ignore the implication of it being on the zodiac for now). From what we know of the Royal Order, it seems to be some type of cult with this as its symbol:

Now, if Filbrick gave it to whom he thought was Ford, wouldn’t he give it to Shermie instead if Shermie was older than Ford.





So yeah, Shermie being older than the Pines twins doesn’t really work. It is physically possible for the baby to be Shermie, so it probably is(just makes the Stan twins more unlikely than they were before and the Pines Twins for that matter).





Bonus: Some more math: If you assume the baby is Shermie, he would be around 21 when Ford fell into the portal. If we assume the Pines Twins dad was born after(even by a few months) Ford fell into the portal, he would be 17 when Dipper and Mabel were born.





I know that means 21 years passed between the Stan twins’ fights, but it makes more sense then ten. Ford spent 6 years in Gravity Falls, so that leaves 15 years to earn 12 PHDs. That’s a lot more reasonable than 4. Besides Stan says “You haven’t seen your brother in over ten years.”