Not having to work every summer was a major appeal of teaching for my mother. That meant we left my father behind in medical school in Miami for a few months and drove all the way up to the East Coast. We would leave when Miami began to sizzle, and my mother would drive me and my brother, Jimmy, in our large minivan.

Jimmy took his position as jester and mother-pleaser in the passenger seat, while I crawled my newly hormonal preteen body into the back of the car.

“Did You Ever Know That You’re My Gyro?” Jimmy sang loudly for about 500 miles the year my mother informed us that “gyro” was pronounced “hero.” The summer after reading Oedipus Rex in middle school, I started calling my brother Oeddie, because of his closeness with our mother. Oddly enough, they loved the nickname.

I played my Metallica “Wherever I May Roam” cassingle on full blast, scribbling “I hate themmmmmmm! I hate them! I hate them!” in my scented journal with a scowl on my pimply face. I stared outside the window at the flatness of Florida and Georgia, waiting impatiently to arrive at South of the Border theme park. After one hundred miles of welcoming billboards, we arrived. I used the $10 my mom gave me to buy things to torture my brother with, like itching powder and a whoopee cushion. The fart noises and our itchy, pink palms filled the car with laughter, even if just for a few minutes.