A Little Known Fact

I know — you all think I was born and bread in Utah — never leaving the shadow of the temple or the MTC, but how wrong you are. When I was 2 we moved to Williamsburg, VA where my dad taught at William and Mary and when I was 3 we again did a semester abroad in Princeton, NJ (where my dad taught at Princeton). I don’t remember a single thing, except for perhaps our bunk beds in New Jersey. But I digress. As I watched the today show today I realized what a great life that my parents must’ve though we were having. Living history, always going to historical sites, daily in fact. My mom said we had a bus pass in Williamsburg and every day we would explore more of what there was to see and do, me in my little umbrella stroller. In fact, I doubt any of you can name a historical site on the east coast that I have not been to. I might not remember it…. but i was there. 🙂 Most likely there’s a slide of it somewhere.

There are NINE MILLION pictures of me in my little colonial cap (the puffy ones — like what Laura Ingalls wore to bed), and my brother in his 3 cornered hat, clad in a bath towel as his cape and we were crossing the Delaware as Martha and George in my mother’s washbasket.

So, what became of this? Well, my brother received a PhD in political science from Stanford and now teaches at BYU. He loves history, he can quote facts like a ticker tape and he was the most amazing student my AP History teacher ever had.

And then there’s me. I hate history. I don’t have the memorization gene that my father and brother have (NEVER, EVER play trivial pursuit with either one, it’s just embarrassing), my AP History teacher wondered what had happened, perhaps I was adopted when I took her class. To me history is a lot of dead people, who made a fair number of mistakes and while I think we can learn something from it — do we REALLY need to know ALL the details of battles, etc? Every once and a while something from the arts will perk my interest, but that’s about where it dies. I did take humanities history of the civilization while I was at BYU and I actually really liked that. But again, I find it mostly to be useless knowledge (which is pretty well forgotten at this point).

How does the apple far SO far from the tree? You’d think, with that upbringing I’d stand enraptured by our forefathers, but I’d rather have seen a cadaver than a history book.

Anyway, I’m not exactly sure where this blog is going — other than that genetics are funny things. It’s always interesting to see how brothers and sisters turn out. So rarely are they all in the same field with similar interests. It’s nice how we can all bring something to the table (even if I’m not allowed to talk about my work at my family’s table — even though my father and brother can drone on and ON about whatever was on Meet the Press that last weekend).

Zzzz…..