For those who don’t know my roommate Kevin, allow me to describe him a little for you.

Kevin is a 30 year old guy who comes from a family who doesn’t like to talk much. When his mother calls, she asks for him by his full name - "hello, is Kevin Burt there please? " He doesn’t have many friends, a girlfriend, a job, or many hobbies. He likes to read books on rock climbing though, and seems to enjoy doing his physiotherapy from a previous bike accident.

Not surprisingly, Kevin tends to avoid most uncomfortable situations. He doesn’t have anywhere to go, so he hides out in his room a lot. If I have a complaint or a request, he prefers that I neither address it to him personally nor put it in writing. He just prefers that things not be said. He’s mostly a non-confrontational kind of guy.

He has recently, however, engaged in some old fashioned civil disobedience. Well, modified to suit his personality, of course.

See, Kevin is normally pretty good at "washing" his dishes (if you call running warm water over dishes washing). He normally cleans them every day or two, although he does have a bad habit of leaving them on the couch (don’t ask).

So last week, when he hadn’t washed them in about 2 days, I wasn’t very upset. These things happen. It wasn’t a big deal moving his dishes out of the sink so that I could do mine the first few times, but then it got to be annoying, so I moved them out one last time and left them on the counter for whenever he decided to do them.

I suppose this was a little too confrontational for him though. It sent out a clear message - "don’t leave your dirty dishes in the sink if you’re not going to wash them".

I can imagine how this frustrated him, since he obviously felt the need to send out of message of his own.

"No, I will not do my dishes, and you can’t make me! "

For over a week those dishes sat on the counter untouched. Meanwhile, Kevin had resumed washing any new dishes that he used, and quite promptly too. I wasn’t quite sure why he was washing the new, but ignoring the old. Then it hit me.

Kevin, the activist that he was, was engaging in his own brand of civil disobedience. The time had come for Kevin to show me that he would not accept my evil totalitarian rules. It was time he stood up for his country in a bold attempt to teach me respect for the individual, democracy, and freedom.

So I laughed at him, he lowered his head, and the next day, I came home to find that the dishes were washed. But we never talked about it - oh no, God forbid we do that!