The Lag
Why do I always find myself asking guys to be more mature than they are capable of being? (Yes, I realize the answer is obvious; it's a rhetorical question.) Let me share with you an episode from my youth, which I had forgotten about until recently...
It was the summer after my senior year of high school. Scott and I had started dating the week before graduation, and everything was going fine. I was going away for the month of July to work at a Christian camp in upstate New York, and there was no talk of breaking up or cooling off or anything like that. He even told me to call him collect from camp. So off I went thinking everything's ok.
Camp turned out to be REALLY hard work, and telephone breaks were infrequent if you could get one at all. When I did try to call Scott, I called collect like he said, and his mom didn't remember who I was. This is the woman who told Scott he should "hang on to this one," meaning me. I thought it was odd that she all of a sudden wouldn't accept the charges. I tried again later when I had 5 min before cabin time and got Scott himself on the phone. He sounded weird, and finally he came out with a "We need to talk." Funny how that phrase pretty much says it all.
When I got back home, I called him up to make arrangements for us to meet somewhere and "talk," for closure if nothing else. We talked for a minute and he said he would call me back. The next call I got was from Scott's best friend, Shawn. He said that Scott was in a car accident on 17 (the main road through our area), and that he was in the hospital. This didn't surprise me at all. Scott was never that great a driver; he had been pulled over twice while I was in the car. So I sighed exasperatedly and asked Shawn which hospital he was in. He said he would find out and call me back. THEN I got a call from Scott's other best friend, Amanda--a girl--asking if Shawn had just called me saying that Scott had been in an accident. I confirmed it and she said, "I just want you to know... it's not true." I thanked her and hung up, realizing at this point that any effort to have a grownup conversation with Scott would be futile. He never did call back.