Here’s a low-level moral quandary, in which maybe I’m a butt-head. You tell me.
I live in a boarding house, where one of my flatmates, Dean, is a non-stop talker who rarely says anything interesting. I’m extremely introverted, rarely want to talk, and never want to talk with Dean. I avoid him, and dislike him.Yesterday I emerged from the hovel of my room to grab a breakfast bowl of Bloated Oatsies, and of course, Dean came into the kitchen almost immediately. It’s one of many un-endearing things about him — when he hears the kitchen floor creak, he comes out of his room like Pavlov’s Fido, to talk at whoever’s creaked the floor.And so, while I chose a box of cereal and poured it into a bowl, Dean talked and talked about the city’s baseball team. While I poured milk over the flakes, he talked about the football team.I nodded, and walked toward my room with the bowl of cereal. That’s when Dean decided to say something more serious.”I was a little drunk yesterday,” he said, “and I seem to have lost my keys. I’ve looked everywhere but they’re really lost.” I’m accustomed to walking away while Dean talks, and rather enjoy it, but being an arguably decent human being I couldn’t walk away while he was talking about a genuine problem. Instead I stood and listened, well aware that with every syllable he spoke, my cereal got soggier.Ah, here it comes: “Do you have a spare key that I can borrow for a few days? The landlord lives so far away, I know he won’t be able to get here until the weekend…”I do have spare keys — to the house, to the laundry room, and to my own bedroom. I could let Dean borrow my spare house key, which would allow him to come and go until the landlord could dupe him some keys.But there are two problems with loaning Dean my spare key to the house. First, it would leave me without a spare key, and second, it would involve doing Dean a favor.Living in this house for a year and a half, I’ve had about 1,000 interactions with Dean, two of which did not annoy me — but those were the first two, so he’s 0 for the last 998.I am not doing that man any favors. “I don’t have spare keys,” I lied to him. “Sorry,” I lied again.Then I stepped into my room and closed the door, sat down and ate my soggy cereal, and wondered very briefly whether I’m a butt-head. You tell me.9/13/2023
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