Facebook reunites man with family he forgot he had

BLOOMINGTON, IND. – Yet another long-lost relationship was renewed via the popular social networking site Facebook on Saturday, when a Bloomington-area man was reunited with members of his immediate family whose existence had completely slipped his mind during his time on-line.

“It’s a miracle,” said Mike Waller, a 38-year-old husband and father of two, who had totally forgotten those marital and parental aspects of his life while fully immersed in the virtual community.

“I was just in the middle of a terrific marathon chat session with my friend Luther, who I know only because we both love Green Day, and I found him through a shared interests search,” Waller explained. “Anyway, I suddenly noticed that a comment had been added to my latest wall post, which said ‘Daddy, I’m thirsty,’ and I noticed that it was from someone who called himself ‘Timmy.’”

“Well, that really got me thinking,” Waller said, “because I could not for the life of me remember who on earth ‘Timmy’ might be.  I didn’t recall having friended anyone named Timmy, but I get so many friend requests these days that it’s hard to remember them all.”

Waller continued, “I looked at his picture and thought that there sure did seem something familiar about him, but I still couldn’t place him. So I just did what I always do when that happens. I clicked on his name and looked at his Facebook profile. And that’s when I noticed how much he and I had weirdly in common, like our last names, and our home address, and the fact that his grandparents had the exact same first names as my parents.”

“And that’s when it hit me,” Waller exclaimed. “I said to myself, man, you have got to write to this Timmy dude and tell him how incredible our connection to each other is, like some kind of  amazing cosmic alignment of coincidences. And then I thought, whoa, what if he also loves Green Day? That would be, like, too bizarre! But when I looked at his favorite music there was only Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers, so then I naturally hesitated about writing back to him.”

“And just then, the second amazing connection happened,” Waller said. “I received a message from another friend I couldn’t recollect, this time by the name of Sarah, which said, ‘Dad, Timmy just fainted. Maybe he’s dehydrated. I think he has a fever.’”

“Well, thank goodness for the Internet,” Waller noted, “because I knew just what to do. I immediately Googled the words ‘fever’ and ‘dehydrated’ and sent a link to the results as a response to her message together with a short note that said, ‘Here you go, Sarah. And how do I know you?’”

When asked what she had then written back to her father, 9-year-old Sarah Waller replied, “Nothing. There was no time, really. I took Timmy’s temperature and it was 102º. Mom was away at a conference, and Dad was locked in his room with his headphones on and couldn’t hear me pounding on his door. So, I just called a taxi, got some money from my savings, and took Timmy to the hospital.”

“And meanwhile, since I didn’t hear back from them about my message, I’m thinking ‘problem solved’ for that Timmy and Sarah, whoever they are,” Waller laughed. “Then, I remembered that I had never looked at Sarah’s Facebook profile to try to figure out how she knew me. When I finally did, I saw that she had a picture of me in her photo album, which totally flipped me out, until I noticed that she also had a group picture of me together with her, Timmy, and my wife Liz, who most people would say is really an unforgettable person, but hey, there you go.”

Waller said it was then that he ripped off his headphones and noticed the 38 missed call messages from his daughter as well as a text message from his wife asking “everything ok?”

“Really,” Waller concluded. “Thank God for Facebook. Without it, I might never have found the family that I didn’t even realize I had lost.”

– Steve Fisher

Tags: facebook, Pop culture humor