Bad Connection

My husband and I have a generally conflict-free relationship. We fight rarely, and when we do, we usually end up laughing. It’s seldom that a dispute will remain unresolved for more than a day. Unless the subject is his goddamned cell phone.

For as long as I’ve known him, and for as long as he’s had a cell phone, he has been horrible about answering his phone. He sets it to silent, and ignores it. This drives me to a state just beyond batshit crazy. Why even have a phone?

A million billion years ago we had Nextel phones. They had that Direct Connect feature, where you could basically use your phone as a walkie-talkie with anyone else who had a similar phone no matter how far away from you they were. It was sort of the audible version of a text message. We used it all the time (as we now use texting), and it was particularly nice while he was traveling. As long as he had the goddamned phone on.

There was one memorable trip to Chicago when I was trying to get in touch with him. With Direct Connect, if my fading memory serves, you would alert someone you wanted to talk to them with some sort of electronic chirp. They could respond or not, but the phone kept a tally of how many times that person had tried to connect with you, similar to the way our current smart phones keep track of how many times someone calls you.

I chirped at him repeatedly with no response. I knew he had his fucking phone, so the fact that he didn’t answer me sent me into the aforementioned state of batshit crazy. I believe I chirped at him 34 times before losing my temper and throwing my phone across the room, where it hit the canvas of an oil painting and made a dent that remains to this day (relax—it was a cheap thing we bought at a charity art auction; it’s not like I hurled my phone at a priceless Renoir or something).

When he finally, finally got around to responding to me, it turned out he’d put his phone in a box of tools and loaded it on the back of a truck where it remained for about two hours before he realized what he’d done.

So cut the guy some slack, you may say. That’s a legitimate reason to not answer you, and you jumped to the conclusion that he was just being a jerk, had a tantrum a four year old would be ashamed of, and damaged a work of art.

Well, in the first place, I would say it was more a work of "art." Also that time it was (semi) legitimate. Every other fucking time it’s been that he just put his phone on vibrate and didn’t realize it was buzzing at him. I’ve asked him about this and it turns out whenever he installs any sort of app that sends push notifications, he opts in to them, which means if his phone is on audible, it’s constantly dinging and chirping sounding, I would assume, like what R2D2 would sound like if he was a particularly chatty drunk.

What a dumb ass.

I went through and opted out of as many of them as I could, but there are still a few that come through, so he still leaves his phone on vibrate 95% of the time, and I still lose my shit about it.

The other night we had this exchange (if you can call it an exchange, when he failed to respond to almost every message sent to him).

Me: "Hey can you stop and get cheese on the way home?"
Him: [no response]
Me: "Hey--we need mozzarella cheese--can you please stop and get some?"
Him: [no response]
Me: "I really need the cheese for dinner--can you PLEASE STOP on your way??"
Him: [no response]
Me: “I NEED CHEESE FOR DINNER. PLEASE GET SOME ON YOUR WAY!!”
Him: [no response]
Me: “Forget it. WHY DO YOU EVEN BOTHER TO HAVE A FUCKING PHONE?!?”
Him: “Words With Friends.”

You can imagine my level of agitation upon receiving this.

It's worth noting that his frickin' job is Customer Loyalty Manager, so he takes calls from customers all day long, some of them on his cell phone. Also? There was an enormous bag of shredded mozzarella in the freezer, so I was able to make dinner after all. But that doesn’t mean I was any more pleased about his failure to respond to me. Asshole.

Does your significant other refuse to answer their phone? Have you ever thrown your phone (or other small appliance) across the room in a fit of anger? In what completely frivolous activity does your significant other engage, like "Words With Friends"?