As everyone knew us: The Most Bickering Couple in Human History

        i’m a callous idiot.  Don’t like the phone, never had a cell (though phyl’s is here now), usually reticent to speak.  It drove Phyllis crazy.   Not proud of it.   Phyl would signal with one ring, then call back, before i’d answer the phone.  She hated it.  i’d tell her, at least i answer yours.  She’d call me a name. 

        In the instances that i did get on the phone with someone, Phyllis would often stand in the hallway and listen in.  We didn’t have secrets.  We knew we’d never do anything that the other wouldn’t know about, but she just had to know what i said.  And if i said something she didn’t like, she’d jump out and “correct” me.  Sometimes, to affirm to the person on the other end of the phone, that i was still in charge, i’d pretend to be irked, but, really, i wasn’t.  Wasn’t irked or in charge. 

        To certify our regard as human history’s married couple that argues the most, here’s how it’d go

(call tones) (again) (again)

phyl:  get it!

(again)

phyl:  get it!

me: you get it!

phyl: I can’t,  I’m doing laundry/the bathroom/the kids/the cats.

me:  if it’s important, they’ll call back.  

phyl: get the phone!!!

        OK, so i don’t answer the phone.  People talk and talk.   i don’t say much, so i used to put the phone down, walk away, and come back in a few minutes.  don’t know which bothered phyl more: putting the phone down;  being so callous, that i was never caught, or being so smug about never having been caught.    i can hear her now; she used to say, “That is S-O RUDE,” enunciating every phoneme.   “Some day, someone’s going to catch on.”  But, lately i learned to use speakerphone, so it’s even less likely i’ll get caught, he said smugly.  Unless the person is reading this, or a hummingbird tells.  

 ….

            More indicative of why we argued so much, is lobster.  We both loved lobster.  Back east, her brother had traps, phyl knew a guy “up the centuh” that sold lobster off his wharf, or we’d go to Kelly’s, JT’s, Winthrop Arms, or Pier 4.  It was all we ate when we went out.  Out here, Maine lobster (not the local pretender, rock lobster) was a real extravagance for us; costly and rare, but, of course, there’s nothing better.  We couldn’t afford it in restaurants, so, 2 or 3 times a year (unless my sainted bff Michael brought it) they’d have it locally.  We’d pick up fresh and cook at home.  After cooking so very carefully, phyl’d always make me take the eyes off “so he/she won’t see me eating him/her.”  Then, as we did for 40 years, we always, always fought over who got the biggest pieces of tail.  But not the way one might think.  We seldom split.  She’d really, really want me to have it.  i’d really want her to have it.  It wasn’t posing; it was silly, sacrificial, impassioned, but i’d like to think, like lobster, our bumping heads was that affectionate.