I finally got in touch with William Alexander MacVay Jr, my only living MacVay relative outside my immediate family (well, unless we count his sister, who goes by her married name). Bill, as he’s called, lives in Florida and is a widower of about 90 years old. We had a great chat about his side of the family; while he doesn’t know as much about the family history as I do, he was able to fill in some gaps in my knowledge of the MacVays who stayed in New Brunswick. Bill never had children, so he was delighted that there are still MacVays around to carry on our endangered family name, with even more on the way (ahem). Al even got to talk to him for a minute.

When our conversation was just about finished I was thinking to myself, It’s too bad Bill probably doesn’t have a computer. It would be great if we could stay in touch via email. Too bad. I was about to tell him I’d mail him a printout of the family history when he said, “Here, I’ll give you my email address. We can stay in touch that way.”

“Wh…well that’s great,” I said. So he read out his email address to me.

“Do you have Skype?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, “but I don’t use it much.”

“Oh, you don’t have a webcam?”

“I do, but I don’t have a microphone.”

“That’s too bad,” he said. “My webcam has a built-in mic.”

Just goes to show you that the ‘danger of a single story’ that Chimamanda Adichie so eloquently spoke of applies to age as well as culture. Elderly internet users for the win!