The day I bought my first car, I called my father. We rarely spoke, just at Christmas and sometimes Thanksgiving, and even that seemed excessive: we had nothing to say to each other. Yet I found myself dialing his number on a Saturday afternoon in April to tell him about this car. One of the few things I remembered that was good when I was small was sitting beside him in the front seat of his dark green Bel Air, the two of us singing “You’re a Grand Old Flag” at the top of our lungs while he drove. My new Honda was dark green. “I hope it has a gas cap that locks,” my father said. I asked him why. “If you don’t have a gas cap that locks, your enemies will get you,” he said. “They’ll siphon all the gas out of your car with a long straw, and then you’ll run out of gas on a deserted stretch of road in the middle of the night with no one to help you.” He coughed. “Or they’ll unscrew the gas cap and pour in a bottle of Coca-Cola, and then you’ll have to spend thousands of dollars getting the engine rebuilt.” “I don’t have any enemies,” I said. “I just don’t want you to get hurt,” said my father.