My Journey Into Facebook

At 46 years young I was involved with starting a female hockey team called the Stanley Cupcakes and now I proudly take another step to break this generation gap, into the unknown world of social media.

You see, my passion is to empower seniors to live the best life they can and I thought that the use of Facebook as a tool for seniors to stay connected with their grandchildren and children might also help them to bridge the generation gap and in turn, create stronger families.  With that, I give it a try!

I must be the only one of my friends not on Facebook. Twitter sounds like a bird and YouTube makes me laugh but my kids and my dad, a senior himself, know all about the benefits.

Psyched up, I find the Facebook site. Should I use my real name or a sexy one like “Hot Hips”?

I decide that if I was using this social media tool for connecting to others, then I better use my real name so people can find me. Apparently it will allow me to connect to my past schoolmates and my world before children.

Name created but I laugh out loud... password! I create one but write it down because guaranteed I will have forgotten it by tomorrow.

Not bad, I’m in. Now I can simply search for friends. I type in my sister’s name, confident she will be my friend. Within minutes, up pops a picture of her, granted it looks like it was taken through the bottom of a pop bottle. Again I laugh out loud. There she is, I click on her name and presto, I can send her a note, in real time. I see that she is friends with her daughters and my daughter.

So I search my husband, my kids and my work. Amazingly, I find that I can connect back to my world before kids.

I find a global site called Camp Tawingo where I went every summer starting at nine years old. I can see the names of some of the members, which I recognize from when I was there and pictures and stories (called blogs) which tell about it as it is today.

This warms my heart and makes me smile.

Lunch is over I have to log out and get back to reality but it’s been worth the adventure. I can’t wait to search for old boyfriends and high school friends so we can reminisce about old times. I might even ask my kids and my 79-year-old dad to be Facebook friends.

Denise Kelly is a North Vancouver Boomer proudly living with her two children, husband and dog Mel.  She looks forward to sharing stories to motivate others.

Originally published BC Black Press 2009