Can you hear me NOW?

I get really annoyed every month when it comes time to pay our cellphone bill.  The $25 it costs for my husband JUST TO HAVE A PHONE (my end of the bill is slightly more than that, what with texting, internet, and my need to have a phone that is smarter than I am, but that's beside the point) is, in my opinion, the biggest waste of money in our budget.  If we canceled his phone and just flushed the money down the toilet every month, it wouldn't be any more pointless.  (Better yet, save that money and use it to purchase a Starbucks franchise so that I can get decent coffee in this Godforsakenplace.)


He rarely answers his phone because a) he can't find it, b) the battery is dead because he forgot to charge it, c) he accidentally set it on "vibrate" so he didn't know he was getting a call, d) he left it at work or in his truck, or e) some variation of all of the above.


There was literally a period of about 6 weeks when he couldn't find his phone.  He swore up and down he'd put it on his tool box at work and somehow, it had just vanished.  Since it's a pieceofcrap phone whose only function is to make and receive calls, the idea of someone bothering to steal it was ludicrous.  I don't even like touching it because it's so flimsy and old.  (Yes, I'm that shallow.  It's an embarrassing phone.  It's the cellphone version of the Family Truckster, that car your parents had when you were a kid and you'd make them drop you off a block away from wherever you were going so no one would see you in it.)


So when I found it on the floor behind the bed, wedged between the headboard and the wall, he had no explanation.  He couldn't even blame it on me (his favorite pass-the-buck technique... "YOU had it last, don't you remember?") because he knows damn well I would be more likely to string two paper cups together to make a call than to use his phone.


For someone like me, who is unnaturally attached to their phone, it literally makes my blood pressure rise when I call him 15 times and he doesn't answer.  How can someone be so casual and unconcerned that someone might be calling them???  (Seriously, when Call Waiting came out and my parents refused to get it, I threatened to run away from home unless they did.  They still didn't, but the first thing I did when I moved out and got my own phone line was make sure it had Call Waiting.  Since my parents paid all my bills, it was almost like they were finally caving in to my demands.  I felt some satisfaction in that.)


I generally don't bother leaving him a message; chances are, if it's an emergency, I'll be dead by the time he finds his damn phone and I'd rather have him suffer and be haunted by guilt for the rest of his life for not realizing the importance of never missing a call.  (Shut up.  Yes, I'm that petty and evil.  I'm also one of those people who has spent the greater part of my 48 years with a phone glued to my ear and who believes that the cellphone is the second greatest invention EVER, topped only by Restylane injections.  I thought my happiness was complete by the invention of the microwave.  Lord, I was so wrong.  A phone you can take EVERYWHERE is truly magical.  Nuking a Lean Cuisine in 4 minutes is NOTHING compared to being able to call your husband from your car in front of your house and tell him to come out and unload the groceries.)


On the rare occasion that he calls ME and I don't answer MY phone (which seriously is usually NEVER) he gets wounded and butthurt and leaves a message along the lines of "Where are you?  Why aren't you answering your phone?"


And here's where it gets tricky... because when I call him back this is inevitably how our conversation goes:


Him, answering his phone:  "Yeah."


Me:  "Hey baby!"


Him:  "Hey!  What's up?"


Me:  "Not much... how are you?"


Him:  *sounding impatient*  "I'm working.  What do you need?"


Me:  "Ummm... you called ME."


Him:  "Oh.  Well, I can't talk right now, I'm working.  What do you want?"


Me:  "Seriously?  I'm just returning your call.  Didn't I just say that?"


Him:  "Okay, well, I can't talk right now.  I'm working.  I'll talk to you later."


Me:  "Okay...?"




Later, when he finally gets around to calling me back, he will say:


Him:  "So what did you want earlier when you called me?"


Me:  "I didn't want anything.  YOU called ME.  I was CALLING YOU BACK."


Him:  "Oh."


EVERY.  TIME.


More often than not, a crisis will occur, Dan will not answer his phone, I will deal with said crisis by myself, he will eventually call me back, I will have a hissy fit that usually involves crying and some accusations about him never answering his phone and he will say, "So is everything okay now?"  and I will say, "Yes...  it is NOW" and he will say, "Okay then.  So other than that, what's new?" and I will want to kill him.


Again.


If there were no phone to call him on, it wouldn't be his fault that I couldn't get ahold of him and his life expectancy would drastically increase, y'all.


I'm pretty sure I need to cancel his phone.  And odds are, if I didn't tell him?  He would never know the difference.


True story.