When I was growing up, I would often go with my family to visit my cousins in New York City. They weren't actually my cousins, but our fathers had gone to college together back in Nigeria, which meant that we were as good as family--especially now that their dad had become a diplomat and found himself stationed at the Nigerian Embassy in New York, and my family had moved to the United States permanently. In a lot of ways, these not-quite-cousins were the only relatives I ever knew. If nothing else, they were the only ones I knew to any meaningful degree. At the time that we first met, there were three kids in their family and two kids in ours. If you were to line us up by age, it would have been me, the youngest, followed by cousin Jerry, my older brother Bobby, cousin Josh, and at the farthest end, cousin Dawi, who was at least ten years older than me. Our visits were awkward at first. The oldest of us weren't quite sure how to deal with energy of the youngest, and the you