I have done some reading and think I have a basic understanding. But if I had to explain it to someone else, I would probably fail, which means I don't understand it well. Please ELI5 this for dummy me.
Let’s say you are 5 years old and your father is 30. The average between you two is 35/2 =17.5. \
Now let’s say your two cousins are 17 and 18. The average between them is also 17.5. \
As you can see, the average alone doesn’t tell you much about the actual numbers. Enter standard deviation. Your cousins have a 0.5 standard deviation while you and your father have 12.5. \
The standard deviation tells you how close are the values to the average. The lower the standard deviation, the less spread around are the values.