Hello to all,

I need your help this week. A friend told me some disturbing news this past week. He claimed that when my wife says, “Can you be any more annoying?” she isn’t asking, requesting, or challenging me to be more annoying.

For over thirty-one years, I assumed she liked my dad jokes, flirtatious touching, and off-color comments. Every time I heard her urgent appeal, I would think up new ways to be more annoying. New and improved ways of annoying my wife were easy in the first year. However, by year twenty, it became a real challenge to conceive of a new way to be more annoying.

The first time she announced, “Can you be any more annoying?” was six months into our marriage. I didn’t even have to think about it; it came naturally to me. Every year, she said those words to me, and I would fulfill her request, only to become more annoying. I thought I reached the pinnacle of annoyance when she was giving birth to our daughter, and the doctor and I were telling jokes to each other. A month later, the pressure was on to find more ways of annoying her when she asked again while feeding our baby.

The last ten years have presented me with the hardship of becoming more annoying. There are still times when a new annoyance greater than any before appears out of nothing. Then, there are nights I lie in bed trying to think up a new way to annoy her. It is harder to be more annoying than I was in our first year of marriage. There were so many opportunities that had not yet been discovered. As gray hair has settled into our lives, it is almost impossible to find new and improved ways of annoying my wife.

This week, someone told me it is unnecessary to find new ways to annoy my wife. A lifetime of arduous planning is all for nothing. Women reading this blog, if your man finds new ways to annoy you after saying, “Can you be any more annoying?” perhaps you should explain to him that you are requesting him to be less, not more annoying.

There are many husbands, boyfriends, and brothers taking your comment, “Can you be any more annoying?” as a challenge to be more annoying.

Grace to all,

Danny Mac