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It’s hard to even imagine what it would be like to be 113 years old, but I assume that my days would be filled with ponderous silence and loneliness as the world pulled away from me. 113 year old Anna Stoehr surely isn’t living like that, though. Last year, she was celebrated by the Minnesota Twins, tossing out the first pitch at a little league baseball stadium that was beamed back to Target Field. Now the oldest living Minnesotan (who up until recently lived on her own) is staying active and engaged thanks to modern technology and a new friend from Verizon who has introduced and guided her in her exploration of Facebook, Facetime, and her iPad. There was one problem with her digital journey, though.
While many younger Facebook users may lie about their age to access the site before they turn 13, Stoehr had the opposite problem. When she tried to select her birth year, 1900, from the dropdown menu, it wasn’t available; the earliest year you can choose is 1905.
So Stoehr cut off 15 years and chose to be a young and robust 99. And then she wrote Facebook a letter on her typewriter: “I’m still here.”
Like a lot of other people, I’m incredibly cynical about social media sites (which I do use) since they are popular and I must maintain a sense of detachment to keep my cool card in good standing. Stoehr’s story puts a heat lamp on my cooled heart, though, and it absolutely blows my mind that someone at her age would keep trying to add memories and share with complete strangers when I resist doing the same and I’m 82 years her junior. The world is big, sometimes that’s easy to forget but this woman who has seen it swell and quake more than almost any of us is still looking around. That’s inspirational and amazing.
Source: The Daily Dot