By Karen Barkstrom

The Daily World

I hate history!

I know that sounds harsh, but that’s exactly how I feel about it. I avoided all the history classes, as much as possible, in high school. I knew I had to have one history class in order to graduate so I took U.S. history in summer school between my junior and senior year because I knew that way at least it would only be two months of misery, versus nine.

I’m not very good at naming U.S. presidents in order — I’m OK with FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. After that, it’s kind of blurry — not sure of the order but there’s Carter, Reagan, Ford, a father and son named Bush, Clinton, and then I know before this last election it was Obama.

My husband, on the other hand, loves history, and is amazing at remembering facts. Whether it’s presidents, vice presidents, wars our country has been involved in, even international events — he has lots of facts stored away. In fact, when we get together with our daughters and their husbands, we often play Trivial Pursuit (the earlier versions) and his favorite piece of the pie to go for is yellow — the History category.

So if I’m not a big fan of history, maybe you’ll find it very strange that I went to see the musical “Hamilton,” not just once, but twice. (For those of you who have not heard about “Hamilton,” Wikipedia describes it this way: “a sung- and rapped-through musical about the life of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, with music, lyrics and book by Lin-Manuel Miranda.”)

Here’s how it came about.

For over two years now, our oldest daughter, Tara, has been obsessed with “Hamilton.” (If there were a stronger word than “obsessed,” I’d use that to describe her feelings about the musical!) She eventually gave me a CD of the original Broadway cast and a synopsis.

At that time I did not have a clue that most of the numbers in the production are rap (or is it hip-hop? I don’t really know the difference). But I do know I am not a fan at all of that type of music.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love musicals. But I love musicals that I can sing along with like “Camelot,” “Sound of Music,” “Flower Drum Song,” “West Side Story” and my all-time favorite, “Les Miserables.”

But from the opening notes of the first song, I got hooked on Hamilton. Before long that was the only music I was listening to in my car; and not long after that, I found myself singing along (even if many of the songs were rap).

Tara talked about how she would love to see it live, but tickets in New York were quite expensive and hard to come by. But she learned it was playing in Chicago, and before long a “girls’ long weekend” was planned with Tara; her sister, Tami; Tara’s good friend; and me. We flew into O’Hare, the girls had found us an apartment to rent and we Ubered all over the city.

When we walked into the theater the evening of the show, Tara was so excited, I thought she might throw up or pass out. And the rest of us were excited to see the show, but more excited to see Tara’s dream come true.

The production was amazing — more than we had hoped for — and we all walked out of the theater wishing we had ordered tickets for the next day’s show also. Who knew if we’d ever get the chance to see it again?

Then came the announcement that there would be a limited run at the Paramount in Seattle. Rumors were flying that people were buying season tickets to the Paramount just to ensure they got tickets to Hamilton. We told everyone we could think of who were season ticket holders that if they got the chance to purchase extra tickets, we would love as many as they could get!

Last summer our good friends emailed me that they were able to order two extra tickets if we were still interested.

Long story short(er), Tara and I went to the matinee performance last Saturday. It was even more incredible the second time around. There’s so much happening onstage that, being the seasoned veteran I was (having seen it once already), I was able to pick up on some of the more subtle aspects, like the character they call “Bullet” who shows up several times throughout the production, and her appearance always has something to do with death.

Tara and I both walked out saying there’s no doubt if given the chance we would go see it again.

Now, getting back to the beginning of my story about my huge dislike of history.

On our drive home from Maple Valley/Black Diamond the day after my “Hamilton” experience, I was bragging to Mike that I could now recite the first four presidents of the United States — Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison — and I even regaled him with the relatively unknown story of Hamilton’s best friend John Laurens, who took Hamilton’s place in a duel with General Charles Lee.

“Wow, that’s great,” Mike said. “Isn’t history fun and amazing?”

“No,” I said. “Not unless Lin-Manuel Miranda writes a musical about it.”

Karen Barkstrom, the Daily World’s editorial assistant, can be reached at 360-537-3925 or kbarkstrom@thedailyworld.com.