Good kid

After stopping through Princeton for a tour of and disquisition upon Princeton by our friend Ted, last night at around eight we stopped at a truck stop at South Hill, Virginia to get some food to gird us up for the last leg home. The pickings were fairly slim. It was Subway, which we diligently avoided through the whole trip, McDonalds, and a range of hot dogs spinning away in the convenience store part. Ever the lover of the frankfurter, Graham rolled with a dog. I reached in my wallet and handed him an undifferentiated wad of smaller bills and headed off for the McD's, having been intrigued by an NJ Turnpike Chinese-language billboard for McDonalds' "new" chicken sandwich (it actually sucked). Somewhere before bedtime I momentarily wondered what had happened with my change for the hot dog purchase. My query was answered when I was headed out to the driveway this morning and I found the remainder of the bills sitting in my cubby next to my wallet.

This is a far cry from how I managed cash with my dad. He took money from He's Not Here in cash, presumably as a means of tax evasion, facilitated by the fact that it is relatively impossible to accurately inventory keg beer since so much can be spilled, etc. I routinely went in and stole money from dad's cash pile on top of his dresser (which is now my dresser), often when he was passed out in bed drunk. Probably I felt justified in doing so because I knew he was cheating on my mom and because he was generally so absent, certainly I felt I was entitled to the money for one reason or another. In any case, Graham is not like that at all, nor is Natalie, for which we are eternally grateful but also more than a little bit proud.