From Tycho over at Penny-Arcade,

The last time my father left, for real this time, the legal document that came to define our relationship decreed that I had to go there every other weekend. I’m not especially good at being told what to do, by anybody, and neither is he, so when I’d go to the trailer he lived in to angrily serve out my sentence he was rarely ever there.

The last time my mother left, for real that time, I would have been fourteen. As an airline pilot, my father was gone for days at a time, so by default I lived with my mother. I had the choice to move to southern Maine and live with his sister, but this would have meant leaving all of my friends as well. Interestingly enough, it would have also meant going to a high school with football. I was much less socially accepted then than people who know me might believe, but I wasn’t one for team sports either. But it always struck me funny, that they had football there. All I remember from that period is spending weekends in the country with my father. By then, most of the other kids my age had moved out of the neighborhood, and all of my friends were in Ellsworth. I distinctly recall being unable to decipher why he wanted me there, where he didn’t actually do anything with me when I was. It took me a decade to figure out he just liked having me around. As he is my old man, I now try to grant him these sundries when I can.

I don’t think about it much.