my favorite bad habit
i’ve got a couple rather enjoyable bad habits.
coffee addiction, a vocabulary only a sailor could appreciate, the ability to tune out a conversation happening in real time…proud achievements from a life of hard work and attention to bad-habit detail.
but i’ve also got a favorite bad habit (besides not closing the cap on the milk jug) and it involves the repeated humiliation of my poor, long-suffering husband.
to fully appreciate my quirk and his shame, you need to understand our dueling personalities a little better.
i can strike up a conversation with anybody in any situation. i can talk to a lunch box and walk away with it’s take on climate change and the patriot’s home opener against the dolphins. i can strike up a conversation with an unwilling participant, be shut down, and walk away completely unscathed and in search of my next conversational victim.
talking to strangers simply does not phase me. it energizes me.
same can’t be said about my poor spouse, though. while not shy or retreating in any sense of the word, the man simply does not have useless conversations that have nowhere meaningful to go. small talk with strangers is like a bad smell in the air to him, the second he picks up on it, his face kind of closes down and he leans away subconsciously.
yin vs. yang, right? i talk to anything, he talks to nothing if he can get away with it. i also possess an incredibly high tolerance for embarrassing situations and he…does not.
right. so in a random twist of hilarious fate, i stumbled upon this quirk in our relationship where he finds himself the driver the majority of times we venture out into the wide world. and i often find myself hungry or thirsty or bored and whenever those settle in, i want to go through a drive through. any drive through. burgers, coffee, donuts, chicken. i find the drive through, he drives through and finds himself in front of the speaker box relaying my order.
this is where the fun begins. i consume a lot of media. books, magazines, radio, youtube, social media, television. and my brain isn’t the best at recalling specifics, only general ideas. so i might hear something about a new milkshake or latte drink and not quite remember exactly which business offers it.
so at the daunting speaker box of potential shame, i’ll have my poor husband ask for the most ridiculous shit in the absolute wrong spot.
“yeahhh,” he’ll begin, casting a doubtful glance over his shoulder at me. “i’ll take a double cheeseburger…and…and a strawberry watermelon bacon salad…?”
he winces. waiting for it.
“umm, sir,” the disjointed voice through the magical transponder will inevitably respond. “this is mcdonald’s….we don’t do salads here.”
you can almost hear the laughter the employee is trying to hold back.
my husband’s lips always thin and he’ll cast me a death glare as i scramble to squint at the menu and find something else. but the damage has been done. i’ve made the poor man order something so ridiculous, so nonexistent, that there’s no way in hell the employees inside aren’t getting a good laugh at it.
i’ve had him try to order hot chocolates a chicken place (i swear they added the service in the winter), key lime shakes at a coffee place, and once i even convinced him that the taco drive through would give us chilli cheese fries.
it’s to the point that if there’s food on the itinerary at any point, he’s conveniently called shotgun as we load in the vehicle and set out. he’s been burned one too many times by me and my favorite bad habit.