The Case of the $3 Cable

I've debated blogging about the details, but boy, did I ever make the right decision to break up with MB. I can whittle the relationship down into seven words – "He wanted three dollars for a cable." I'm posting purely for posterity, because this story deserves to be in the history books.


Here's some background. We were together for 10.5 months, our parents had met each other, and we had discussed marriage and kids and houses and ten years later and all that stuff. I thought he was The One! But thankfully I realized his crazy rules would stifle me and I would never, ever be happy. And I deserve to be happy! (There's more, but this is it in a nutshell.) It didn't exactly end on a high note. 6 weeks later, we still had to do the stuff dump (you know, returning or otherwise getting rid of the other's person's items that accumulated over the course of the relationship). Right after I broke up with him, I put all his stuff (except for the two gifts he gave me) into a bag, and waited for the right time. It sat there taking up space in my apartment.

Well, who knew when we would see each other, so I figured I would bring it to a mutual friend's house this past Saturday and emailed him that I would. One of the items was a wireless router he had installed (one of his "extras") to make life more convenient for him when he visited my place. In preparation, I wanted to confirm if any of the connecting cables were his. I actually have lots of cables so I didn't need any. If I for some reason did need, my dad has lots of cables. We have cables en cantidad! I had thought at least one of them was mine, and I could have just given them both to him just in case, but why should I give him MY stuff? He should receive his stuff, no more, no less. He also has cables in quantity.

So I emailed him and asked if one or both were his. He basically responded that one was mine and one was his. So there's the answer, I thought. But there was more to the email. I read on. He wrote that if there were more than two, then anything else was his. But I could just give him three dollars for it.

I stared at the email, astonished. I picked up my jaw from the floor. I rubbed my eyes and read it again. I debated between laughing and crying. Finally, I just decided to be pissed. What the hell!?

This is what I get for trying to be courteous. But it just reinforces my good decision. My sister said it succinctly: anyone who expects three dollars from his ex-girlfriend of nearly a year for an Ethernet cable deserves to be dumped. And I agree. Harrumph!