Pop!

[tedwords]

You know how everyone has a funny little quirk or two?

Like, my refrigerator fear. Y'all know the drill by now: the fear of I have of eating food that's managed to find it's way into the corners of the refrigerator. That just screams old and diseased to me, even if the food was just placed into the fridge the day before. Cornerfridgerasitophobia, I believe is the clinical diagnosis.

Corb has his share of quirks, too. For example, his gum thing.

See, whenever Corb buys a package of gum, he feels a compulsion to open up the pieces in a certain order. He begins at the top left hand corner of the package, and pops out a little piece of gum from its aluminum prison. Then, works his way across that row, piece by piece. After that, he'll move on to the next row, until he reaches the end, and the last piece, in the lower right handle corner. Sort of like eating an ear of corn, I guess.

It may take him weeks, but it has to be in exact order.

Me, I don't have any such compulsion. I'll just open up the package, randomly pop out a piece of gum, and shove it into my mouth.

But God help me if I do that to HIS gum! He gets all pissy about that, because I've destroyed the natural order of things. And I do it all the time, too. Usually, it's because I'm not thinking. But sometimes, I confess, I do it just to irritate him.

It's interesting, the things you have to take into consideration, when you're part of a couple. Not just the big things, but the little as well. Which side of the bed your partner prefers to sleep on, whether they clip their toenails in your presence or not. Each relationship is different, each foible is unique.

Through the years, piece by piece, you inevitably pop open each quirky packet and learn what it's all about. And that's part of the fun of being in a relationship, I think. Each little quirk packet is as fresh and as fascinating as the one that came before.