I've mentioned it before, but I lived with my parents until I was 28, mostly because of Mother's out-of-control depression, but partly because my parents fell on really hard times after Dad left teaching, and I thought they needed me around. (There was only one of me, so it's not like I was THAT much of a drain on the household. At least, I'd like to think not.) One of the things they needed was my car; I drove a '90 Corolla (yeah, there's a pattern) and it was the only safe vehicle among the three of us. I was working in Chicago at the time, so Dad would drop me off at the South Shore Station in Hammond in the morning, and then we would alternate taking cabs home so he could use my car on the days he had teaching gigs. (He would leave my car at the station when it was his turn to cab it.)

On the days that I didn't have him rushing around like a maniac so I wouldn't miss my train, we of course would talk, and one time, he suggested he and I write a book together. He envisioned it as a coming-of-age story not unlike A Separate Peace or Death Be Not Proud, but involving the service and the Gulf War, or something like that. We never got around to it for whatever reason, but one thing was for sure, and that was he had much more faith in my writing ability than I did.