Kennedy put on his uniform, said good-bye to his family, and headed for the command post.
"Bye, I got called into the office for some kind of 'emergency'," he said, putting air quotes around the emergency. "It's probably Jenkins, turning on the alarms to frighten a woodchuck again. The man is an idiot. Listen, I might be late for dinner, so why don't you all climb into the car, get on the interstate and head upwind from here. Maybe try to put as many miles as you can between yourselves and here as you can."
His family looked at him, somewhat dumbfounded.
"Make a game of it," he suggested. "Drive for three hours, then stop, figure out how far you've gone, and then drive for another three hours and try to beat that by getting even further away. Do it Iike, five or ten times, and figure out your best score."
"Is something wrong?" his wife asked.
"No, no, nothing wrong," he said, as reassuringly as he could over the sound of the waiting helicopter. "It just a game. Prepare us for any problems in the future."
There was an awkward silence as his wife dug into her purse for the car keys, tears silently dripping from her face.
"Daddy," his daughter asked, "are we going to die?"
"Yes," he said matter-of-factly, "but not for a long, long time. You have a whole lifetime between now and then." It's what he always he told his daughter when she asked about death, but this was the first time he checked his watch while saying it. It was the first time he realized that a lifetime might be measured in hours rather than decades.
