What does "home" mean? (5 minutes)
On Wednesday morning I tell my roommate that I'm going home for the weekend. On Sunday afternoon I tell my parents that I'd better be heading home soon. Somehow these both make sense. What do I mean when I say "home?" Surely it's not the house, or even the town, I grew up in. When I go to visit my parents it's nearly always at a place they bought just two years ago. Is it the place I've slept most often in the past year? That seems a bit functional and transient for something we have a reckoning of being beyond logistics and having some enduring character. A good friend told me that home for him has always been where his parents are, or somehow contained in his relationship with them. When he's been in Bolivia, or Nicaragua, or northern Michigan, he can get that feeling of connection to home by talking with his parents on the phone. This question is dominant in the 2001 movie Joe Dirt . When David Spade's character returns to where he grew up