B hates a capella singing.

He hates it so much that I can't even hum around him.

I like to hum. I'm not the best singer in the entire world, but I can carry a tune and make it sound pleasant, and I can belt, if it's the right song.

When we were at Disney World, there was a group of girls in line for the bus back to our hotel, and they were singing a terrible teenage girl rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. I put a great deal of effort into convincing him not to brutally murder all of them.

B hates a capella singing.

B told me he doesn't mind it if it's a black woman singing (or a white woman who sounds like a black woman: Joss Stone) by herself, but any other a capella singing is intolerable. I took this to mean he could listen to male black people singing as well, so I introduced him to TV on the Radio's song Ambulance in the hopes that he'd like it. No such luck. He explained to me that he hates it about twice as much when the a capella singing is done in imitation of instruments, which is exactly what is going on in that song.

I personally just don't get it. I was trying to get him to listen to the lyrics. I suppose when something causes that much pain, poetry is irrelevant.

The instant I launch into a hum and he's within earshot, he usually looks disapprovingly at me and wags a finger or goes, "nuh uh."

This information, tucked away in my seedy little corner of the internet, will someday be his downfall.

Five to ten years from now, when he's a vigilante crime fighter, a barbershop quartet will send him into drooling, pissing seizures and end his watchdog patrol over whatever city for the rest of his life.

It might even kill him.