When I was in grad school I had a friend who was recently married. For her first anniversary she kidnapped her husband and took him away for the weekend to a small inn out in the country near where I had grown up. She took along a picnic basket filled with champagne and brie. (In retrospect, this doesn't seem too practical, unless they were going to stop and have a picnic on one of the crack-infested streets of north Philadelphia. And, unlike Texas, where it is apparently required that you drive with an open, partially consumed container of alcohol, popping that champagne cork while driving would be frowned upon. Plus, wouldn't the cheese be in a rather sad state of decomposition, filled with gut-wrenching (literally) bacteria by the time they arrived? Yes, I know that brie needs to soften up, but having been the victim of cheese-based food poisoning in college, I tend to err on the side of keeping it cold. But I digress.) It was a wonderfully romantic story, but the part that intrigued me the most was the lack of control her husband had over the situation. She was careful to make sure his schedule was clear that weekend, but I wondered about how he felt about it. He was a lawyer and always seemed very much in command of himself and liked to manage his environment. I’m sure he appreciated her efforts, but I wondered about whether he enjoyed allowing someone else to determine his destiny, if only for those few days.