Young man back home

Scott Warnock,

I agree that it should be pretty simple: My house, my rules.

But quarantine has made everything complicated. The plan was to start his journey to independence in the fall, a college frosh. Step one in a journey not just academic and professional but personal.

It was through no fault of his that it didn’t work out.

It wasn’t as if the prodigal son returned. Or the indecisive college student came back. Or we lost our jobs and couldn’t pay for college. Or he failed out. Or he graduated and didn’t have a job. Or house arrest.

It was circumstances beyond anyone’s control.

On a frenzied weekday afternoon, with an invisible, toxic shadow in the crevices of the city, he had to pack up and come home. He is back eating our food, sitting on our couch. Overall, we are glad to have him here safe.

But it can also be irritating.

Before I explain, I should point out that this is still a guy who cuts the grass when he’s asked, takes out the trash, never cusses, and even goes out at wee hours to give rides to his younger brother so we don’t have to.

But still, I now get to see the everyday life of an 18-year-old who was torn from seven months of living away unexpectedly, inadvertently back home.

Lots of giggling at TikTok. Fortnite. There is no such thing as breakfast. Somehow, during, the pandemic, he got a girlfriend. She’s great. She likes him. He likes her. I’m watching it unfold.

My wife wants to check his phone to see where he is sometimes. But he’s a generally honest guy and all I normally need to do is ask. I remember once in high school when my wife called and asked him his business and he provided what was admittedly a seemingly improbably series of steps with an improbable group of people before he came home. Well, she followed the phone path and it turned out he did exactly what he said he was going to do.

I’ve been forced to be whirled into my own past: What was I doing at 18? What would I have done at 2:00 p.m. back then? 2:00 a.m.?

I bite my tongue. A lot. We’ll wait to see as the grades come in and the resumes go out.

Again, we get along well, but I bite that tongue because there are dangerous moments with a father and son, and you have to watch what you say. The boy might try you–in fact my younger one already does that a bit.

So if I get too chippy, too, well, anything, it could disrupt what’s been a good 18-year-run.

I was lucky (?) enough to have lived with a wide range of people in my life: About 30 roommates. I think sometimes people living with adult kids forget the simple reality that it’s plain hard to live with people. Why would living with your own adult child be any different?

People across the country are dealing with the oddity of not only having had their kid abruptly bumped back home, but then also being home bound themselves.

It’s a recipe for madness, so you have to step back and realize, even in favorable circumstances like ours, that no one wished for this. It was brought upon us. Like all things, it will pass.

So we’ll bite our tongues, back off on the surveillance, and sometimes, when he wonders down bleary-eyed at one in the afternoon, say a mantra: “He’s supposed to be living away right now.”

Scott Warnock

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.
ends & odd