DadTalk

Dad Tweets

Twitter is an interesting phenomenon. For those of you who haven’t come across it, it allows you to send short ‘status’ updates of up to 140 characters that tell the world, or at least anyone who’s following your ‘tweets’, exactly what you’re up to or what you think about what you’re up to. Most things on it are fairly banal ‘tired this morning’ or ‘looking forward to the weekend’ etc.

Occasionally though there is an interesting development and it’s usually around hashtags. Hashtags enable twitter users to all comment on the same subject by including a tag that starts with a hash character. A recent example amused and intrigued me as it went by the tag #tweetyour16yearoldself. The idea is that twitter users would send a message ‘back in time’ to their 16 year old self. What would you, if you had the chance, like to tell yourself? Some used it for humour. I sent myself the message.

“Never, ever wear white canvas shoes and a pink shirt #tweetyour16yearoldself”

Which I hope would help me avoid the embarrassment of trying to replicate Miami Vice in real life. It was a sorry time in growing up.

Another wrote “Hang in there-you're going to meet an amazing woman, get married, and unleash a maniac into the world.”

But as the tag developed, people began to take it more seriously. 

“Break up with your boyfriend NOW, and go do your Russian homework. Only one of those is going to take you places.” Wrote one user who clearly wanted to avoid a duff relationship. Another wrote “no honey, no one cares and you shouldn't either” which is a tragic conclusion to have come to in life, born clearly from pain. A third wrote “Someone is always going to hurt you” which is desperately sad. But I think the one that stands out to me is this.

“ask mum and dad loads of stuff about their childhood and family history. They won't be around forever - kiss both xx”

The tragedy of opportunities lost, things unsaid and some advice to a sixteen year old to grasp relationship while it can be had. It reminded me to keep telling the family stories to our kids. Every birthday we tell them about the day they were born, but I think this tweet made me realise how important the age old process of family story telling really is. Telling the stories, and asking grandparents to retell the stories, earths kids and gives them a sense of identity like nothing else. Christmas is a great time to take some time to retell the old stories, I'm planning to go for it.