Calling means talking? No way!

Declan is not a fan of the telephone, nor has he ever been. The interruption a phone conversation provides, from whatever adventure he is currently involved in, is of course a bother, however, the subsequent conversation generally holds little enjoyment for him either.

Typically that means attempting to have a conversation with him over the phone is a very one sided proposition and his answers are as short and to the point as possible. I have felt bad for his mother at times, when she has made the effort to call him only to have him make it very clear that he had no interest in talking with her.

I'm sure the first few occurrences bothered her too, despite my efforts to downplay them. Until, that is, he did the exact same thing to me during one of his early summer visits with her.

As much as it bothered me that he had no interest in updating me on how his summer was going, I was glad at the time to know his mother was able to experience it from the other end, if for no other reason, than to continue the peace that existed between her and I.

Given his distaste for telephone chats, I was more than a little surprised when he made a recent request to use my phone.

"Can I have your phone?" he asked from his back seat booster as we made our way home.

"What? Why do you want my phone?" I replied, eyeing him curiously through the rear-view mirror.

"Nikki (not actual name) gave me her number and told me to call her," Declan replied flatly.

"Who is Nikki? Why does she want you to call her?" I continued my interrogation, thinking he was setting me up for another one of his unscheduled play dates. Declan was not amused and his tone quickly became irritated.

"She's a girl in my class and I don't know why, she just said to call her," he replied.

"What were you talking about when she said to call her, are you wanting to go to the park or something?" I continued to question the young man's simple request and unintentionally complicated the matter.

"No! She just said to call her and gave me this paper," he said as he waved a small torn piece of paper with a carefully scribbled phone number written on it.

"Can I have your phone?" he repeated.

I noticed that Declan seemed just as confused by my resistance as I was of his request, so I handed him my phone, but not without continuing to blunder the situation by saying "Ooooh, she likes you."

"She what?" he asked with genuine curiosity.

"If a girl gives you her number and says call me, that means she likes you," I replied.

"She's my friend," Declan replied in his my-dad-is-a-knucklehead tone, implying, "Of course she likes me."

It was then that it occurred to me that Declan hated talking on the phone and perhaps this was the beginning of a change. I unfortunately made the mistake of saying out loud what I was thinking.

"You just normally hate talking on the phone," I said.

Declan almost immediately shriveled up his brow in deep thought, his gaze bouncing from the phone in one hand to the paper in the other. It appeared as though my comment had spurned him to realize, that after dialing the phone number, he would actually have to have a phone conversation.

The second phase of his simple mission suddenly became more complex than he was willing to participate in.

"Never mind, I don't want to call her," he said after a few moments and reached his hand out, attempting to hand me back my phone.

"No, no, no, go ahead call her, don't you want to know what she wanted?" I scrambled to save the situation, realizing too late I was likely responsible for dashing the little man's determination to make his first phone call. No amount of encouragement or pleading from me could save the situation though, his mind was made up.

I eventually conceded the scenario was a loss and silently chided myself for not handling it better. The words of a wanna-be boxing champion from my youth came to mind, "I need to get faster, bigger, stronger," and then I realized, none of those things were going to help.