One morning my daughter ran into my home office saying: “Mom, get off the computer I have to Google how to save the world, right now!”

She loves researching things.

When she was four the passion was dinosaurs. I had to stumble through piles of books crammed with words like Euoplocephalus and Zephyrosaurus.

“Are you sure you want me to go on?” I’d ask after a lengthy paragraph about the Cretaceous period.

Her: “Keep reading!”

The current obsession is President Teddy Roosevelt.

Her: “Did you know that Teddy or Teedy was his nickname and that Theodore was his actual name?”

During a recent trip abroad, she couldn’t wait to get to the bookstore to find a book about him.

The lady in the children’s section didn’t bat an eyelash.

“She was watching a movie, and became interested,” I said slightly defensively. I don’t know why, but I find it a little weird that my seven-year-old is hung up on a very old, long dead president.

I don’t get the attraction.

“Was she watching a documentary or is she studying him at school?” the lady asked brightly.

I shook my head. “Nope, she saw the movie Night At The Museum: Secret of the Tomb.” In this very silly movie a model of Teddy on a horse comes to life at night and helps a beleaguered night guard regain control of the museum.

After the bookstore trip, we called my dad back home, and my daughter gave him a very confused lecture on how Teddy almost died when he was shot, and was blind.

My dad went into surgery a few days later, and I spoke to him afterward.

He was still thinking about Teddy.

“Teddy didn’t die from being shot,” he said. He proceeded to tell me everything he knew about the 26th president of the United States, despite having a sore throat from the operation.

My dad loves history, like my daughter.

He loves to joke that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, unless the tree stands on a hill. I would say our family tree stands on fairly flat ground.