There's always that one annoying thing that a spouse does that really gets under your skin — pick their teeth at the dinner table, not put their clothes in the hamper, or like one woman who wrote into the Dear Prudie advice column, clip their toenails and leave them all over the house. Bleh. So gross, right? Tired of asking him to kindly clip his toesies above the trash can, the woman decided to teach her husband a lesson the hard way — by putting his toenail clippings into his morning coffee.
The woman has been trying to get her husband to quit his nasty habit for the last five years.
Specially, her husband likes to pick his toenails while watching TV "and then leave the remnants on the couch where he’s been sitting," she wrote in her letter.
That means she's found all sorts of nasty junk on the couch, coffee table, and floor for nearly half a decade.
Admittedly, it doesn't happen frequently, but when it does — yuck.
"I have explained to him that it is disturbing and gross (and embarrassing if someone were to come over)," she wrote.
She's asked him several times to take his toenail clipping to the bathroom where it belongs.
Alas, "my requests have gone unnoticed and been ignored."
The wife feels grossed out and disrespected by her husband's habit.
So, she came up with a devious plan.
Who among us could honestly say that this wouldn't get on their nerves? But probably not many of us would have gone to the extent that the Letter Writer did, though.
"I have begun to passive-aggressively handle this by picking up the clippings whenever I find them and putting them in his coffee cup in the mornings," she wrote. "I know this is wrong, but I find some relief in making him discover his own toenail clippings in his coffee."
Sure, it's sort of strange — but is she wrong for not knowing how else to get her husband to stop?
Hmmm, the comment section didn't seem to be on board with this one.
"I'm sorry, Letter Writer (LW), your husband is super gross, but you took the freaking cake," one commenter wrote in.
"Two wrongs make two wrongs," someone else agreed. "Don't put toenail clippings in someone's coffee."
"Really I can think of much grosser things than nail clippings," a third person wrote. "If this is the only bad thing he does I'd deal with it."
Columnist Danny M. Lavery actually cut the wife some slack.
Sure, he could see that it's pretty disgusting to feed your husband his own toenails, but “my God, how hard is it to clip your toenails over a trash can, after being reminded every couple of months for the past five years?" he wrote.
In fact, he doesn't have many suggestions for the LW if after five years she can't get her husband to put his clippings in the trash.
"In your position, I might very well find myself tempted to do the exact same thing and feel simultaneously defeated and a certain thrill of vindictive pleasure," he wrote.
Lavery wondered if the woman could come clean and just tell her husband that she's at her wit's end.
He recommended that the LW tell her husband that she "admits defeat here." And then try to help the situation by saying something like this:
"I’m clearly missing something. What are you getting out of this? What’s going on inside of your head when you pull off your toenails and leave them on the table? Do you find yourself spacing out and forgetting what you’re doing? What do you think would be necessary to get this to change? I’m absolutely out of ideas. What do you suggest?”
Of course, her husband probably won't be cool about the whole clippings in coffee thing, but Lavery explained that it's time for him to come up with some solutions to this whole problem.
"You’ve done the heavy lifting for the past five years," he wrote. "I think it’s fair to ask him to take the lead now. Good luck. I’m rooting for you."
