Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Genealogy, I am doing it

This The Coolest Thing Ever is related to family history just like the last one, so you probably already don’t care. I have shared this and other details about our genealogy with my very own immediate relatives and haven’t elicited anything exceeding a “that’s cool” from the lot of them. How am I supposed to interest you, I wonder. You aren’t even related to me so how can you relate to this?

On a related note to this related note, I am starting to realize just how, shall we say, ”specialized” an interest in family history is. I find it endlessly fascinating but cannot seem to interest even my own flesh and blood in stories of where we came from.

I am worried that this hobby (obsession?) is akin to those with unhealthy fixations on Star Trek, Everquest, or political partisanship.

Some people are down with genealogy, but most are not. Maybe it’s just my family but I wonder if I have misjudged the potential for wide popular interest. Does that make me like those embarrassingly post-adolescent-fanboys-turned-fan-men, balding beneath their stormtrooper helmets? Am I blithely missing awkward brushoffs at parties when the topic turns toward this fascination of mine? Am I becoming “that guy”? You know, “that guy who can immediately pull out his family tree and show how he relates to Charlemagne”? Shudder. Nothing like devotion to obscure principles and practices to make a fellow insta-weird.

Are there any socially acceptable obsessions nowadays, healthy or unhealthy? I can’t think of any. In some circles, confessing a substantial interest in genealogy is rather like admitting to an awkward and embarrassing social disease.

Oh, wait – the Coolest Thing thing. To heck with it. Ask me about it at the sci-fi convention.

No comments: