Facebook reunites man with family he forgot he had

ZLÍN – Yet another long-lost relationship was renewed via the popular social networking site Facebook on Saturday, when a Zlín 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 Milan Stejskal, 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 Pepa, who I know only because we both love the band Coldplay and I found him through a shared interests search,” Mr. Stejskal explained. “Anyway, I suddenly noticed that a comment had been posted on my wall which said ‘Daddy, I’m thirsty,’ and I saw that it was from someone who called himself ‘Kuba.’”

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

Mr. Stejskal 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 that we both live in Zlín, and that his grandparents had the exact same first names as my parents.”

“And that’s when it hit me,” Mr. Stejskal exclaimed. “I said to myself, man, you have got to write to this Kuba 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 Coldplay? That would be, like, too bizarre! But when I looked at his favorite music, there was only Mandrage and Lady Gaga, so then I naturally hesitated about writing back to him.”

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

“Well, thank goodness for the Internet,” Mr. Stejskal 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, Anička. And how do I know you?’”

When asked what she had then written back to her father, 11-year-old Anička Stejskalová replied, “Nothing. There was no time, really. I took Kuba’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 Kuba to the hospital.”

“And meanwhile, since I didn’t hear back from them about my message, I’m thinking ‘problem solved’ for that Kuba and Anička, whoever they are,” Mr. Stejskal laughed. “Then, I remembered that I had never looked at Anička’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, Kuba, and my wife Markéta, who most people would say is really an unforgettable person, but hey, there you go.”

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

“Really,” Mr. Stejskal concluded. “Thank God for Facebook. Without it, I might never have found the family that I didn’t even know I’d lost.”