Month

I speak the title line of this post to my three cohorts—aka my family—from behind the wheel of our vehicle for the past week, the silver Saturn Vue. My family faithfully ignores me. Both my wife and our older boy, Maxwell, are on their iPhones, the former sending emails to the animal caretakers with the news that we’ll be a day late, the latter sending texts and instant messages to his recently-made

The time is six o’clock on an August afternoon that is turning into an August evening. Maxwell and I are driver and passenger, respectively, in the silver Saturn Vue, and we are stuck in miserable freeway traffic at the edge of downtown Chicago. Just ahead, enticingly, is clear passage to the ramp for Interstate 290, also known as the Eisenhower Expressway, because the freeways in Chicago all have names. Maxwel