After getting involved with social media personally, before I got involved with it professionally, I discovered I had relatives that I never knew existed. Well, let me qualify that a bit. I knew they existed. They were sort of on the periphery of my awareness, first-second-third cousins of my father. But I never really thought about them much because when I was a kid my father didn’t interact with them. I don’t know why he didn’t interact with them. I suppose for the same reasons that I don’t interact much with my 19 first cousins. Your lives take you in different directions.
As I’ve been discovering these different Telofskis I’ve been doing a bit of a family tree on them. Based on what my father told me over the years, and based on what I’ve been able to pick up from other sources, I’ve found that I have first-cousins-once-removed on Facebook, as well as second-cousins-once- removed on Twitter and Facebook as well. I’ve found it amusing that some of the first-cousins-once-removed are younger than the second-cousins-once- removed. Figure that out. Maybe that’s the way it should be? Dunno. You geneologists out there would have to chime in.
Anyway, meeting them online has sort of been like a family reunion. “Sort of” because I’ve never actually met them in the first place. There never was a “union” so there really can’t be a reunion; although it feels like one. I think the surprise of finding others with such a unique last name has also been a surprise for them. My nieces and nephews on Facebook have been finding these second-cousins-once- removed also (although I suppose for them the second-cousins-once- removed are really third-cousins, but nobody’s really sure). And when they found those other unidentified Telofskis who apparently have the nerve to share our last name 
(just kidding, folks) they’ve asked me, “Who are all these Telofskis?” They’d ask their own father, my brother, but he has announced he has no interest in Facebook, claiming “I don’t need any friends,” although he probably has more real-world friends than most people I know. When they ask about the unknown Telofskis, their surprise is somewhat like finding others living on your own deserted island. Like on the show Lost. Well, not quite, but go with it. Or like finding chocolate on the moon. Or like waking up one day finding you really have six fingers on each hand and that idea about five fingers was some misguided vision foisted upon you by uninformed persons. Well, enough of the metaphors, but if you think of a better one let me know.
When thinking about these other Americans who have the same last name as I, and there aren’t many of us, I think about the guy who brought to the United States that name which defies spelling over the phone. (Yes, that’s T – E – L – O – F, as in Frank, – S, as in Sam, – K – I . If I had a dime for everytime I’ve gone through that liturgy, I’d be writing this blog from Tahiti.) The guy who brought this gem to the Land of the Brave was named Stephan Talauska. Yes, Talauska. Or, at least that’s the story my father told about his grandfather. When my great-grandfather hit the shores of the land of the free, telephones weren’t a hot item so he probably didn’t worry about spelling his last name over the phone. But Talauska isn’t Telofski. I heard a Polish woman say once about my last name, “Talauska Poland; Telofski U.S.” Okay, so per my dad, Stephan had his name changed when he arrived at the Customs House in NY harbor. (Ellis Island wasn’t yet built when Stephan arrived.) Geez. They couldn’t have changed it to something more easily spelled over the phone? Oh, wait a second. I already covered that.
I think about Stephan and wonder if he ever thought that someday he’d have descendants who wouldn’t know each other but would have a somewhat ungainly moniker to navigate through life with. Then I think, nahhh. Because if he did, when he got to the Customs House, he would have told them his name was Smith or at least Smithski.
But thanks, great-grand dad for making the trip. It couldn’t have been easy. None of it. Getting together the passage fare. The trip. And especially adjusting to life in a land filled with Smiths, Jones, Andersons, and other more easily spelled names. If you hadn’t done what you did, I probably would have been born, in some way or shape or form, behind the Iron Curtain. I probably would have been forced to go to work in a Yugo plant at some point or some other weird socialist factory. I would have been thrown into the upheaval over there when that Curtain fell. My zlotys would have become worthless and, man, I know all of that wouldn’t have been as much fun as it’s been living in the USA.
So what this all comes down to is this. If you’ve got a fairly unique last name, join some social networks and go hunting. Create a reunion. Because of social media, it’s something that we can do now that we could never do before.
