After my mother died, I lived alone for a few months in the house where I grew up, with my grandmother in the house next door. On this one particular summer night, right after I turned 17, I told my grandmother that I was going to go into work for a little bit to fix a fence in the swimming pool (I was a lifeguard, and the fence was a safety hazard). Work was literally one block away; I took my car just so I wouldn't have to lug my tools.

I came home one hour later, and there was a police car in front of the house. She had called the police to report me missing when I had been gone for all of about 50 minutes, at a location a block away.