Three weeks is advanced warning, right?

"Hey Adam. Rebekah bought herself a new desk, and won't be needing her old computer desk. Do you know anyone at college who might want it?"

I refuse to just throw out a perfectly good piece of furniture, but I sure would like to get it off the upstairs landing. Surely in a college of a few thousand students, someone would welcome a freebie desk.

"I'll ask around."

He gets in long after I'm in bed that night, so it's the next morning before I have a chance to ask. He's on his way out the door. This is how we have most of our 'conversations', in a snatched 2 - 4 minute window between his rising from bed (12.7 minutes prior) and the bus he has to catch (in 5 minutes). About the desk, son?

He forgot to ask around. Of course.

"But," he says, considering, "maybe I could use it."

I give him the look. Adam has a small-to-middling room, which is currently comfortably full with bed, shelves, dresser, and large-to-enormous desk. (It has to be, to hold all those computers.)

"Where are you going to put a second desk down there?"

"No, in my new place.'

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

The boy is twenty now, and just finishing his first year of college. There was talk about a year ago of his moving out, but it never manifest. Since then, nothing.

"Your new place?"

"Yeah, you know. I've been going over to Loden's house to check out the place."

He went over to Loden's house, far as I knew, to hang out with Loden. Same reason he goes to any of his friends' homes. Far as I knew, Loden lived with his parents. And as far as I knew, Adam wasn't planning on looking to move out until next fall.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

The subsequent 4 minutes of conversation revealed that Loden lives in a house shared with "a bunch of other guys", and that, when a room came free, Loden and the guys asked Adam if he'd like it. The rent is cheap, and it's right around the corner from the college. (It is. Adam showed me on Google Maps.)

The same four minutes of conversation also revealed that the move will take place on May 15. Three weeks from his not-quite-announcement. Did it not occur to him this might be a piece of info he should be passing along? Did it not occur to him to, you know, make a conscious decision to sit down and inform me? While I have no objection to a young adult communicating with a parent on a "need-to-know basis", did it not occur to him that this would be one of those things I could reasonably be expected to "need to know"?

No, no, and no.

Communication! This young man just does not "get" communication. It is this, more than any other quirk or weakness in the boy's character, that causes me the most worry about his future relational happiness. I know it's caused a girlfriend or two some pain already. I hope he'll outgrow it. I fear it's innate.

Good thing his sister decided to buy a new desk, huh? Otherwise I mightn't have found out until "the guys" started hauling boxes out of his room...

Comments

[Z]

It is a young bloke thing and seems to have crept in the last ten years. Al, who's 33, didn't do it, Ro, who's 24, does, although Al is quite private and even secretive in some ways compared to his brother.

[Ali]

Boxes? Do you think he'll organise boxes? Now that you know of the impending move, you might, but I'm not sure he'd do that by himself!

Ali