WE LOVE THE KID.

Let’s just get that out there from the top. He’s perfectly loveable and we have no problem with the love thing. As far as it goes. Which is further than we might have thought, but still.

He’s a nice kid. Good manners. Fun sense of humor.

And he’s cute. Very cute. Easy to please. And smart! Oh my goodness, he’s a quick study. He’s making excellent grades in his second round of college.

Yeah. He went before. Trade school. Extremely promising in terms of parents’ dreams; that is to say in the highly desirable realms of employment and independence.

He did very well that time, too. But it didn’t pan out. Meaning, in the gentlest, vaguest of terms, so as not to distress you, Dear Reader, he got distracted. Took a detour. Wandered. Meandered. Deviated. Digressed.

And then one morning he woke up! Maybe on the day when his cousin was having his second child. Or maybe it was the day when his best friend in high school, voted Most Likely to Develop Enlarged Thumbs from Video Game Syndrome, announced his engagement to an intelligent and beautiful young woman whom Our Kid had kind of fancied in his adolescence.

We thought he was awake anyway. His eyes were open and he looked right at us. He wanted to get back into school, he said. Needed a place to stay while he renewed his commitment to normal. Hooray!

It’s good, I tell ya. All good. We’ve been happy to have him here. Extremely happy. Happy happy happy. Oh yes. Happy.

So …

Those little dots after the “so”? They represent a finger tapping. A toe twitching. A physical expression marking the passage of time. Or, more accurately, a tell-tale sign that some of us may have lost track of time. Some of us may have gotten more comfortable than others of us planned for them to get!

Some of us may have expanded into the space available. Some of us may be thinking this bedroom on the other side of the house is a pretty good deal.

Some of us may have lost touch with their primal teenage urge to break free!

But others of us have not forgotten those things, Grasshopper. Others of us are keen for your little winter bulb to send up a shoot. To bloom. Some of us are looking for the launch, Buddy. We don’t want to seem too eager, but we’re thinking you seem a bit too content. I mean, where’s the hunger?

We didn’t come to this grinding of teeth suddenly. Perhaps it began back in the early weeks of his tenancy when he dutifully let me know that we were out of lunch meat. Again. Or that he needed shampoo. Or razor blades. Or that he had scraped the last remnants off the sides of that giant Costco jar of mayonnaise! O. M. G.

I’m sure I tensed up just a little bit back then.

It’s not that he won’t do whatever we ask. It’s that we have to ask: Go ahead and load the new roll of TP, Son. Yes, you can empty the dishwasher. It’ll be OK. When the trash is full, that’s your signal to take it out. No need to wonder about the best course of action. And when you pass by the newspaper on the driveway, bring it in. Yes! You saw it first! Carry it right on into the house!

He’s close to completing his education and we are trying not to seem too anxious. We are hoping that he’ll get a job soon and thereby become eligible in the bachelor sort of way. Is it too forward of me to compose a profile for him on Match.com?

We’re not trying to pass off a ringer! Honestly! We think he’ll make a great husband: He has an easygoing disposition and is trainable. Kind of like a Labrador retriever.

Which is another reason the Kid needs to go. Our new puppy arrives today and there’s only so much patience in the reservoir.

Yes, some young woman will find the Kid loveable, dependable and loyal. Please. Help us out here.

Did I mention he’s cute?

Carolyn Plath, M.Ed., is a Benicia resident and retired high school principal. Read her blog at thinkdreamplay.blogspot.com.