There is nothing funnier than my family when they are running late for something. It’s a known trait on my fathers’ side, because he has OCD. He’d take legendary showers, half-hour to forty five minute events while everyone else wondered what he was doing in there. His showers were full of guttural nonsense, vulgar ways of saying vulgar words like “sonovamother” ” or “hooyoobitch” (these translations may not be completely accurate because I am accessing a directory that is about 25 years old) but let’s just say noise was made that I never heard in my life when my Dad got under the water. He never made it to work on time, consistently late almost an hour but he had seniority so it was no big deal. The guy worked nights, babysitting gigantic magnetic tape machines that kept a massive shipping company float in New Jersey.

These things weren’t funny then-it caused many other anguish producing memories that I cannot talk about here yet, but watching my own family’s disastrous and confusing escape from the house(save for me) helps loosen some heartstrings,as Miles Kurosky says. The only one not ready is me. That is because I don’t get to go out, I have to buckle down the house for the family’s reentry. Which, I must remind myself, is a job that has no ignominy attached to it.