When I was about 14 or 15 years old, my dad’s uncle died and he and my mother had to go to Chicago for the funeral. We lived on the East Coast, so it meant that they would be gone for at least a week. They were driving the distance to save money on airfare that they couldn’t really afford. So they would be spending two days driving in each direction, and three days there. They were thinking of taking me along with them, which would have been painfully boring for me. But they
