Seems I'm (almost) human after all

Over recent months, my wife Patty has bitched incessantly pointed out that her quirks and foibles too often inspire me as I craft blog entries, write stories for my books (existing and in-progress) or update the Facebook fan page for my book. She asks, "Why don't you turn the focus back on yourself?" In response, I roll my eyes and cluck, in part because I have very few noteworthy quirks, and in part because I like to cluck when the opportunity presents itself.

Of course, you and I both know she’s being irrational (yet another of her delightful quirks). However, in the interests of self-preservation equity, I list below a handful of my own unique qualities; I hesitate to call them “quirks” because they’re so darned adorable, as you will see.

• I absolutely will not enter a bathroom with anything in my mouth, with perhaps the exception of cigarettes (which, because of a medical condition—uncontrolled addiction—I require at all times), and my tongue, teeth and uvula, and only because I haven’t figured out a safe, temporary way to remove them for the duration of bathroom visits.
 
• I have a Chicken Little complex. If it’s especially sunny outside, only dusk convinces me the day won’t end with the world as a giant, glowing fireball, upon which the only things that will survive are me, thousands of cockroaches, a heavy winter coat and a boxed set of the Twilight books. Everything that happens over the course of my daily comings-and-goings bears ominous overtones, most of which seem certain to lead me to (a) poverty, (b) incarceration, (c) erectile dysfunction, (d) a slow, painful death, (e) all of the above, or (f) all of the above…on a giant fireball.
 
• If I’m upset with someone, I will not make eye contact with them. I will address all comments during any dispute to either the television or my cocktail glass. If someone asks me to look at them while we’re talking, I simply blur out my vision and pretend I’m focusing on them, even though I'm basically blind. To seem less rude, I conduct most arguments from adjoining rooms, from which I can yell my side of the argument and pretend not to hear any retorts.
 
• I rarely use the appropriate utensils when preparing and/or serving food. My preferred tool for almost everything is the wooden spoon, which means that any soup I prepare takes 45 minutes to move from pot to bowl and contains no more than 10% liquid (which is, incidentally, how I prefer my soup).
 
• I cannot follow a recipe without adding at least three ingredients not listed. This fierce sense of individualism has, on more than one occasion, been catastrophic in the culinary sense. So, although I believe both onions and garlic are delicious elements in almost everything, they have proven to change the overall flavor of, say, apple crisp.
 
• I am incapable of going to the store and returning only with what I went out for. If I was sent out to replenish our milk supply and went to a store that sold only (a) milk and (b) Brussels sprouts, I would buy both, even though I abhor Brussels sprouts.

I hope my wife is happy. I am human. I have quirks. As mentioned, they’re adorable quirks, but they’re quirks just the same.