My brother had finally arrived. Late at night, I opened his door and poked my head into his room, which had been conspicuously empty for several months.
"Can't talk long. I'm writing about Foucault's Discipline and Punish. Welcome back."
Dad was asleep, exhausted from the reverberations of a thousand machines, finally clean from the linoleum rollers' grime, his eyes closed -- at last resting from the glare of a thousand synchronized, blinking fluorescent production-floor lights. Assembly lines are wearying. To factory workers, silence is precious, so I spoke softly.
"We'll talk later. Have a good night," I whispered to my brother.
Dad's voice jumped out of the dark hallway entrance. "You're writing about the panopticon, aren't you?"
Clearly, Foucault gets around.
Of course, I would expect no less from my father. It's slightly odd and intriguing that I come home from college, he comes home from the factory, and we stride about the kitchen discussing Karl Barth. It's humbling that he knows more than I.