Did you ever wonder (the never ending phone call)...

A phone call between my wife, mother-in-law (M-I-L), sister-in-law (S-I-L), or any combination of the above -- usually, on speaker phone -- goes something like this:

Wife: Hi Mom. What are you doing?
M-I-L: Nothing. What are you doing?
Wife: Nothing. Hey, blah, blah, blah... Mom! Are you listening to me? (M-I-L is searching on the Internet and not paying attention to wife). You're not paying attention; I'm going to let you go.
M-I-L: Okay. I was just looking at what the market did today.
Wife: Bye. I love you.
M-I-L: I love you, too. Bye.

But, that is not the end of the call -- they stay on the line... Neither hangs up. They listen, and finally someone says something like, "Are you still there?". Or, better yet, just after they offer their good-bye's and begin to hang up, someone will say, "Hey, wait, did you, blah, blah blah?..." At which point the conversation will drone on for another 10 to 15 minutes; usually with the same frustrating interaction. And this can, and often does, happen more than once.

It driiiives me nuts! What's so hard about saying good bye, and hanging up?

As I alluded to earlier, sometimes a call will consist of wife, M-I-L AND S-I-L -- with M-I-L and S-I-L usually on speaker phone. The speaker phone issue usually dominates the call -- wife gets irritated because M-I-L and S-I-L are talking to each other and not including her, or they just can't hear each other because of background noise.

In my house calls like these occur, at a minimum, usually twice per day and I feel like the guy in the video clip below...

The kicker here is that that there is, to the untrained ear, nothing substantive communicated on these calls. To most the calls would be an exercise in futility, or a waste of time. However, to wife, M-I-L and S-I-L the calls are a complicated form of communication; a way to gage each other, if you will -- to make sure everyone is doing okay for the day. And I understand that...