I like one of my carpool companions, but he irritates me. His latest thing was to spill gasoline in his trunk, and then insist on driving. The first day after the spill I refused. A few days later he wanted to drive, and it didn't seem so bad, but if you sat in the back, whew! I felt both high and sick at the same time.

Then one day we were driving, just the two of us, and it hit me: the reason he bugged me so much is that he is very much like my father. Not in appearance - they don't look anything alike, but in the way he talks, the expressions he uses, the strangely formal and constructed diction he has, the way he repeats himself...

And I should say, my dad died just a few years ago.

So on the way home I just listened to him talk, and half-pretended I was listening to my dad.