The friend was merely trying to decide if her own husband's foibles were as strange and annoying as the speaker's.

Or not so bad.

She thought of him as she half-listened to the story of Tinkerton. Her husband, McCray, was humorless. All her best jokes were lost on him. And he was a worrier. He worried about missing garbage day. He worried about global warming. He worried about her driving the car beyond the 3000-mile oil change. He worried about terrorists on his flight.

And there was more.