You knew this was true about me, but lately seven-year-old S has been declaring this repeatedly, which is quite a change from his previous insistence that he hated history.

Now, him “hating” history didn’t stop him from reading it and enjoying it, so I think that was all about getting the goat of one or both parents. Quite possibly, the emphasis was on the goat of the parent with the degree in history and the interest in writing books about this stuff.

But his newly professed love of history appears to be the real deal, and I think I know what started it. While I’ve been bringing home the U.S. history books, my wife has been reading Susan Wise Bauer’s The Story of the World series to him — Mesopotamia, the Magna Carta, and so forth.

A few weeks ago, their Bauer reading included a chapter about a little ship called The Mayflower. “Hey, I’ve heard of that!” S exclaimed.

The dots had been connected, the stories I’d been sharing with him had been fit into a larger context, and a (self-professed) history lover was born.