My dad wanted to get away from it all—work, family, kids—and before he died, he had a plan to move the family out to Colorado to escape the primeval muck of northern New Jersey. He also escaped into books a lot, and into his basement office when we lived in the big house in Fair Lawn. 

There is one and only one cause for this: fear of other human beings and how you respond to them, how they can change the way you feel about yourself and the world. 

I've both inherited and embraced his escapism. I've always been brooding, like him, and in need of quiet and spaciousness. He didn't like noise and I don't either—I'm way too sensitive to unwanted sound and can barely filter it out— and I wonder how much of that is physiological and how much psychological. 

Probably a lot psychological, I'm guessing. I bet you're guessing the same. Sometimes, when I get noised out like I did at that Seattle wedding, I think about how my dad avoided people in the same way and wish we could sit down to compare notes. 

We could both be at a wedding together, and slip out the back door separately to walk around the block. We'd tell people we just wanted to get some fresh air, when in reality we just wanted to get the hell away from other human beings. Enough with the human beings! Give me space! 

If we ran into each other, walking around the block in opposite directions, would we stop and talk? Would we vaguely grunt at each other? Would we pass by, each pretending the other didn't exist, but—recognizing a kindred spirit—giving him sufficient space on the sidewalk so that our shoulders wouldn't collide?