Quirk Wars

Okay, okay, I’ll stop! Y’all gotta admit I had ya there for a second. I thought I’d take a shot this week at writing about people’s quirks because it’s one of those topics where all the women who read this are going to look over at their menfolk and say, “Ha! Quirks! He doesn’t know the half of it! You must be the only man in America that has to scratch himself “down there” twenty or thirty times a day! Nothing can possibly itch that much!” And all the menfolk who read this will then look over at their ladies and say, “Ha! Quirks! I don’t even have to talk about your quirks, I can just talk about how your hair smells right after you get a permanent!” The potential for causing all this mischief is just too fun to walk away from, so I‘m not. I think I’ll get the ball rolling by talking about some of my own quirks, which should set the table for some good “after the column” conversations this week. Here be a few of them:

“I like to be naked.”

Look, I know y’all might be laughing, but I‘m being sincere, I enjoy being naked. I like the freedom, I like the feeling of air touching me from all angles, and I like not being trussed up in a bunch of starchy clothes. Frankly, being naked is a luxury for me these days, as with having a child still at home I can’t just doff my threads any old time that I want to. At heart, though, I’m a nude dude.

“Hiccups drive me crazy.”

You know, y’all can’t tell me that most people who have the hiccups can’t get rid of them if they just use a little will power. The sound of a hiccup drives me insane, and someone having them for a lengthy period of time must simply enjoy having the hiccups. I’d rather listen to Amway promotional tapes or watch videotaped surgical procedures than listen to someone hiccupping.

“Long winded preachers make me mad.”

Y’all gotta admit, this is true for just about all of us, we just don‘t like to admit it. I’m lucky because my current preacher, Jerry Dingmore, understands that the message has to be both interesting and to the point. The problem is that for every preacher like him there‘s five who’ll preached for seventy-five minutes and don’t care that the Falcons kick off in another fifteen. Too much of anything, excepting Elvis music and Nu-Way hot dogs, is just about always a bad thing.

“No one sits behind me at theatres or ballgames if I can help it.”

This happens to be a learned quirk, and for good reason. I’ll never understand why people pay lots of money to go to a ballgame, only to sit there and yap all the way through it. Worse yet, how many of y’all have shelled out for a movie, gotten to the pivotal point in the film, and heard a cell phone go off? And even worse than that, how many times has the person making the noise been sitting directly right behind you? Because of dopes like these I’ve learned to never let anyone sit behind me if I can help it, and if I can’t, I try to eat a couple of bowls of raisin bran right before I attend the event.

“I read while I eat.”

Can’t help it, Ed Jr. used to read the paper at the table when I was growing up, so I mooched this quirk off him. Y’all can’t make fun of it ‘cause I had no choice, and y’all don’t really want to make fun of my dad, now do you?

“I don’t like doing stuff I don’t like.”

I don’t understand why this is even categorized as a quirk, to me it makes perfect sense, but I’m told by my spousal unit that it’s a huge quirk. “Edward, you can’t always do the things you’d like to do.” Maybe one day I can make myself enjoy funerals for relatives I don’t even know, prom lead-outs, and watching other people’s home movies, but don’t hold your breath...

All of y’all should be primed up pretty good right now. You guys out there, y’all just put down the paper, smile, and look over at your ladies and say, “You know, honey, I’ve always want to talk with you about why you go to the bathroom so often.” And ladies, y’all just put down the paper, smile, and look over at your man and say, “Snugglekins, why is it that you smell a tad musty even after you bathe?” That should get the ball off and rollin‘....