It was a snowstorm-y night a day or two before my 20th birthday, and I went to visit him after work. (I worked in a chi-chi women's clothing store in those days.) He lived about six or seven miles from me, and the easiest way to get there was taking this back road. So, I'm driving along in the snowstorm, and about a mile and a half away from home ... oh, yes. A couple 360-degree spins into telephone pole.

It was poetic. I laughed upon impact, and then I started screaming, because how the hell was I going to explain to Mother why I was coming home that way when I told her I was going to be doing something else that wouldn't have involved coming home from Dyer?

Luckily, the friends I said I was going to be with lived in Illinois, which you could conceivably get to from the road I was on, so I made up some cockamamie excuse as to how we went someplace out that way -- but not before Dad getting in my car and going over the story with me so we'd both have it straight. How's THAT for a cool dad?

Another time, I played said boyfriend on the phone because Mother didn't want me seeing him anymore, so Dad volunteered to be the one to tell him/me. There were millions of times like that.