During the summer vacation between my junior and senior year my parents celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. They had gone on a cruise for their honeymoon so they had decided to re-capture the experience. The biggest difference was the first cruise had been on a second rate ship and had lasted only a week. This time around, due to the fact that they were better off financially, they booked a master suite with a balcony and this cruise would last 15 days.
Now normally when they went away I would stay home by myself. But because they would be gone for over two weeks during the height of summer party season had made them amend their thinking this time. Instead they arranged for me to stay with my father’s brother and his new wife.
“Listen Jim” my father explained “I know you aren’t happy about this but it’s the way it’s going to be. We trust you but we’ll be gone almost three weeks counting the flights we have to take each way and your mother and I won’t worry if we know you’ll be at my brother’s house. You’ll eat real food this way and if something happens, there will be someone there to help. Besides after what happened at the Fosters’ last year your mother was concerned that something bad could happen.”