“Hey—I want to have a quick history chat.”

He groaned as he threw himself in the van, adjusting the seat to fit his long legs. “Now?”

“Oh come on, just a quick one,” I said, cheerfully pulling out of the driveway.

“Ok. What are we talking about?” His good natured attitude won out as I asked him a few questions.

And that led into a conversation about historiography, interpretation, and then—somehow, out of nowhere—how I hated a military history course I took for my undergraduate degree.

His mouth fell open.

“You HATED a military history course? How is that even possible? Why?”

I shrugged. “It didn’t interest me. It was super boring.”

“Boring?!” My laughter at his horrified expression did nothing to soften it. “Mom. Mom. Military history is THE BEST. Are you telling me that you don’t care about—(insert ten minutes of ranting about the Purple Heart, veterans, World War II)?”

“Well, hold on a second,” I said, defensively. “What you’re describing is more about what individual soldiers experienced during war, and the impact it had on them. I love learning about that kind of thing. But this class wasn’t like that.”

“Oh. Well, what was it like?”

“Military campaigns, troop movements in particular battles. Stuff like that.” I turned onto the cobblestone street, and we bumped along under a mature canopy of trees. “Any time we learned about an individual, it was about generals and stuff. And don’t get me wrong—I’m very very glad there are military historians out there. I’m just not one of them.”

He thought about that for a second.
I smiled as I remembered being one of only three females in a class full of male ROTC students, feeling like a fish out of water in the ROTC building. (Those two other female students and I became friends as we shared lipgloss and tried not to fall asleep that semester.)

“Well, what kind of history DO you like? What do you like about history?”

I paused.
No one had ever really asked me that before.

“Honestly, I think what I love about history is that nothing ever just…happens. There are all of these amazing connections between people and events: one thing creates another thing, creating this ripple of movements and countermovements. It’s awesome. And people are walking around and have no idea how they’re all connected.” I motioned to a couple of ladies walking a dog.

“So, like…the butterfly effect? You like the butterfly effect of history. Like if one thing changes, everything else is different.”

“Huh. That’s interesting. I never thought about it like that, but I think you’re right. The butterfly effect.”

We rode in silence for a minute.
I imagined an invisible network, a silvery web of all the people in all the timelines, connected by events around the world, unlimited by language or nation. I saw the new connections which would have been made, and the ones which would have been lost, had a single thing been altered.
It staggered the mind.

It staggered the mind so much, that I realized I needed to ponder it more when not behind the wheel of a vehicle.

“Can I take a picture of us before we get home?” I asked, nevermind that my hair was a mess. “I just want to remember this conversation with you.”

I expected another groan but it never came.

“Sure, mom.”

“Thanks.”

historychats