I married Ed

I have been married to Ed for more then 20 years.  I can truthfully say that I love him more today than on either of the two times I married him (long story).  Having admitted that, there are times I would gladly trade him for an iced venti cafe mocha with an extra shot from Starbucks.  Like all men, Ed has annoying habits.  Most men have them and keep them and then you can decide if you want to deal with them or not because you’ll never be able to change them.  Ed is different.  Ed has rotating annoying habits.  He has annoying habits that he replaces with other annoying habits, he invents new annoying habits or updates old ones with a twist BUT he never has the same annoying habits at any given time – it’s annoying.

Here’s his latest: He no longer says goodbye when he is done with a phone conversation.  He just stops talking.  You are left to wonder if he is done and about to hang up or if he is taking in needed air.  When this habit first appeared last week, I would stare at the phone when he hung up thinking “Did he just hang up or get cut off?  Oh well, whatever.”  After this happened lots more times, I realized he had given up using the word “Goodbye”. 

Now it’s like a game for me, I’m the type of person who will let you hang yourself if you bring enough rope and want to do so.  So, if he takes too long a pause, I hang up.  It makes him call back to ask if I hung up on him.  I never answer that question directly, I just say “I thought you were done.”  This behavior was starting to exasperate him so I finally pointed out his missing critical to good phone etiquette “Goodbye”.   He didn’t deny the missing “Goodbye” but he offered no excuse for it.  During our next phone conversation he said goodbye.  So it’s back but now I have to wonder what his next annoying habit will be . . .