U.M.

My mother grew up in a large family. She was the fifth of eight children. As I've grown older, I have noticed that through her stories about her childhood she was trying to point out that she had a lot of freedom. She had a lot of freedom not because her parents were neglectful but because with eight children, its hard to keep tract of them all.

One day, my mothers brother, Mark, told my grandparents that he was going to spend the night at a friends house. It was a friday evening. Off he went to what my grandparents thought was school. Instead of going to school, he went to the airport and purchased a ticket for California. The exact location now escapes me. He boarded the plane and when he landed, he found his way to the Grateful Dead concert going on in that city. He spent the whole day and night at the concert. The next morning he boarded a flight back home. He got home in the early afternoon. When he walked into the house my Grandmother asked him how his night at his friends house was. She had no idea that he had skipped school, flew to California, and saw a Grateful Dead show.