My Better Half

Wil has two weeks of school left. After today, only 4 academic days, then he is done being the student, sitting in the chair, being asked to do the last thing on earth he wants to do, forever.

He's a bear every year at this time, but this year it's bear squared. It's allergies. It's spring. It's being done. It's had-enough-yet-can't-get-enough. It's endings and beginnings and transitions and the great unknown. It's being left behind and wanting to spread his wings. It's needing help and wanting to be independent. It's being almost-nineteen in body and about half that in most other ways.

We're both fried, overly emotional and easily upset. In general, we're quite companionable and when we do get on each other's nerves, it's brief and we move on almost instantly.

The last several days we've been at each other's throats. He's being so extra defiant, bossy, demanding, difficult, that it brings out the hard ass in me. Wrong combo.

Yesterday, I picked him and his friend up from school and we were driving home. I asked some innocuous question along the lines of, "Do you have your phone?" and he lost it. Maybe it was reminding him of what he needed to do when we got home. Maybe it was asking that when he take a shower, he remember to wash his hair. Whatever it was, he was not happy with me, and I was not happy with him.

"That's it! We need to break up! We need to spend some time apart! You don't need to worry about me! You worry too much! You don't need to know all my business! We need a divorce! "

His friend chuckled from the backseat, "Wil, are you guys married?"

"We're not married!" he shouted, raising an arm with index finger extended for emphasis, "we're sidekicks!"