Excessive coffee, pledging to NPR, and singing opera

This morning, Dave and I were hopped up on my favorite coffee (Das Bog-White Nights Espresso), reading the paper, and listening to NPR during their pledge drive. Dave donates every year, I would like to donate more, and especially after I just did my taxes, the write-offs are good.

But this post isn't about donating, it is about Dave's odd behavior when speaking with operators. Whether he is ordering clothes from LL Bean or talking to the person taking his pledge, Dave acts like he is a shut in who hasn't had a decent conversation in a year. Needless to say, I always mock him for flirting with the housewives taking his order, but today took the cake. He has had an opera song in his head for a week but he doesn't know what it's called. It's a common one you would recognize, but neither of us knows the name. So I hear him start to ask the pledge taker on the phone if she knows opera and I know immediately where this conversation is going. I scream from the next room "Don't you dare sing to her!", but it was too late and he started humming the song. (Which we later figured out was "La donna e' Mobile" from the Italian Opera Rigoletto.) She of course had NO idea, because she is a chain smoking, grandmother of 3, living in Arvada who has never been to the opera in her life. (I got all of this in my 3 minute conversation with her.) Dave's rebuttal is that these operators have to sit and answer the phone all day and he likes being nice to them. I'm not convinced that his version of nice isn't their version of annoying :)