I held an aged ten dollar bill between us. He looked nervously at the grocery store, teeming with shoppers. This was supposed to be good for him—independence—agency.
“Why do we need money for milk?” he asked with the haughty air of a grade-school philosopher.
“Because everything costs something, son,” I said.
“Everything?” he said.
“Everything.”
“We could just take the milk,” he said.
“Like stealing?”
“If that’s what you want to call it,” he said.
“It’s not what I call it, it’s what the dictionary calls it,” I said. I took a steadying breath, as that’s what I’d been told good fathers do. “Then you’d pay for it with time instead of money—time spent in jail. Get the milk?” I urged the greasy bill closer. He looked out the window.
“We could change that law,” he said.
“Then everyone would have to pay for the milk. Safety. Society. Stability. Milk,” I said. He seemed to be thinking about it. I lowered my outstretched hand, feeling tired and like a failure in more ways than one.
“We could burn it all down. Start over,” he whispered out the window.
My voice came out louder than I expected and we both jumped.
“What in the hell are they teaching you at that school of yours?!” I said.
“That your generation broke the world. That society is built on lies and oppression. That—”
I cut him off.
“When are you going to start thinking for yourself? You’re twenty-two years old, Danny!” I said. I got out and slammed the car door behind me hard enough that the glass of the half-rolled-down window rattled in its frame. I held the green paper bill between us like a shield. “Don’t worry Danny! I’ll get the damned milk!” I said.
I stormed off toward the sliding glass doors—for the first time in my life, I empathized with all those stories of fathers who went to grab a gallon of milk—and never came back.