At some point, every son musters up the courage to stand up to their father.

They put their foot down over some trivial matter in an effort to show independence or to show up their paternal figure. It’s a rite of passage, a more familial version of Graham Allison’s Thucydides Trap. It usually goes horribly wrong, but hopefully makes the relationship stronger.

After my parents divorced and after being prodded by my brother to take us to California so we could meet his family, my father packed up his car and drove my siblings and me to the West Coast. None of us were old enough to drive, so he was stuck manning the wheel solo. My sister and brother helped to navigate. I, too young to be of much assistance, sat in my car seat sucking my thumb.

For any parent, a road trip can be an extreme stressor. It wasn’t much different for my dad, except it was all compounded by several factors. He’d just finalized his divorce with my mother. He had not seen much of his family in many years. AND he had to drive a 1978 Ford Maverick, what we, in my high school years, would have likely dubbed a hoopty, all by himself with three young kids at varying states of defiance.

Combine that with his notoriously short fuse, it was a recipe for disaster.

The trip itself took nearly a week. We would drive several hundred miles, stopping periodically at tourist spots along the way. We’d be on the road for four to five hours max. Anything more and my siblings and I would get restless, which would lead to my father to the brink of combustion, and just as things were about to go nuclear, an oasis would appear on the horizon in the form of a rest area, hotel, or some sort of resort. We would pull over for the rest of the day to recharge.

As we entered California on our first cross country roadtrip in 1986, whatever plan my father had designed to lengthen his fuse had failed. Looking back, it’s fairly clear one of the main stressors was the fact he was about to visit his family. That trip, the one that followed two years later, and any other since then always triggered something in my father. I’ve never asked him what it is that causes him the most stress or why his family is a trigger. But if I did, I know he’d likely dissemble, unless I beleaguered the issue.

On this morning, as my father was loading up the car for the last leg before hitting Tehrangeles, something triggered his fuse. Time has faded the memory, but one could imagine I was being uncooperative. My older siblings, Meena and Jacob, weren’t helping much either. Things were spiraling. The countdown to explosion was nearing its end or it may have already hit zero. Lift off was just around the corner.

At some point, aware of the impending doom, and being just precocious enough to not really care of the potential to make things worse, I stopped sucking my thumb and looked straight at my father, who at that time was raising his voice and angrily packing and repacking the car.

“You don’t have to get so hyper about it,” I said confidently despite not really understanding what ‘it’ was or understanding that my father’s rage came equipped with an indescrimenent second-strike capability.

My siblings, having fully understood what could have come next, looked at each other in shock, mouths agape. ‘David has no clue what he’s stepped in,’ they likely thought.

Having satisfied my urge to restore decorum, I promptly stuck my thumb back in my mouth.

My father seemed to have gotten the message. ‘Calm down, Mohammad, what’s the point of getting angry with your children who aren’t responsible for your anger. You should be happy about visiting your relatives. You should be happy your kids are with you. You should be happy they want to see your family too,’ he told himself.

Tension and rage diffused, my father’s blood returned to its natural state and we got on our way.

This wouldn’t be the last challenge I offered up to my dad. This was merely the beginning.