Talking about History

Last week I was visiting some family in my home town and I had an interesting conversation with my 16 year old cousin about history. This surprised me, as he doesn't seem the type to be so interested in history, but more interested in sports and video games.

It all started when he was asking me about what I did at uni. I explained to him that I was studying history, and writing a thesis on the Spanish-American War in 1898. This seemed to spark his interest, and he said that one of his teachers was from America, and that he liked history too. The conversation then moved on to something else, and I quickly forgot about it.

The next day he told me that he had been telling his American teacher about my thesis at school that day. I was quite surprised about this, and asked him what he had said. He explained to me that he had told his teacher all about the Spanish-American War, and what I was doing at uni. I then started asking him about what he was studying in history at school, and discovered he had been on an excursion to a historical part of the city and he commented on how interesting it was. We then spent quite a while talking about history and how it impacted our lives today.

I guess the moral of this story is not to underestimate the interest that history has for people, and certainly not to underestimate 16 year old boys and their interest in studying the past. Maybe I should pitch this to a video game company.....