“We’re just going to make a quick run to the Gas-N-Go!” said Jensen’s parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and thirty-two cousins before driving off in sixteen family cars nearly 72 hours ago.

“Be back soon!” all fifty-three of them added.

“When is daddy coming back?” said Jensen as he tugged on his absent mother’s dress hanging in the closet. “Also, when is mommy coming back? And Sam and Yvonne? And Uncle Joe and Aunt Kelly? Grandpop? The quintuplets? All of the Hansens?”

Beginning to worry, Jensen says he is also unsure when his entire hometown of 14,000 people will come back from picking up that carton of milk at the grocery store.