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I do, do you?

20:56 / 22.11.04

i have recently noticed a couple of habits/quirks that seem to be entirly unique to me, i know i know rich tapastry of life blah blah blah, but i would be a bit more comfortable to know others share my kinks.

when i arrive anywhere, a bar, uni, anywhere. i always make my way to the toilet straight away even if i dont need it, ive tried to work out why i do this but still dont have a scooby.

i eat paper, not reams of the stuff, just bus tickets and the corners of photocopys, i think it must be the texture i enjoy.

so anyone else do these? and maybe somone wants to share there quirks, so we can expose for the freak you really are.

21:16 / 22.11.04

I always reach for my throat whenever passing someone in the street.

23:12 / 22.11.04

If my hands get wet from anything, including perfectly clean water, I immediatly wash and dry them. To rephrase: if my hands are wet, I get them more wet in order to dry them.

I sort candy by color when eating, and always save a red candy for last.

I used to eat paper, I rationalized it as a cheap substitute for chewing gum.

23:24 / 22.11.04

I always put pencils behind my ear. If I’m round someone’s house, or in an office, and there’s a pencil lying around, I can’t help but pick it up and play with it, doodle, whatever; and I often just put it behind my ear when I’m done. I don’t even realise I’m doing it - sometimes I only snap to when I’m going to slip one pencil behind my ear and another one drops out. My 4-year old niece drew a picture of me the other week which was a stick figure with a pencil behind his ear.

01:29 / 23.11.04

I'm a chinstroker when lost in deep thought. At home, if I'm sitting in front of the computer I'll put my feet on the seat and my knees against my chest. I'm small enough that this doesn't look too weird.

I've discovered I can add/delete quirks like these with a bit of effort. To whit: I've trained and untrained myself to tug my ear once when I'm thinking deeply about something* All I did was tug my lobe when I was concentrating and it sort of stuck - deleting it just took the opposite, mentally watching out for that pre-tug reach and stopping it cold. No tugging today, you ear!

* I'm actually a freak because this was inspired by an old Batman comic. Christ.

02:17 / 23.11.04

I've been living alone for over four years now, which means I've accumulated a whole host of single-person quirks. You know, the ones you do while you're alone, but would never want anyone else to catch you at?

I have a sad delusion that I'm going to quit smoking any day now. As a result, I refuse to acquire a proper ashtray. For the past month, I've been using an empty sardine tin.

Sometimes when I'm writing and I'm in a stuck place, I'll snip off the ends of individual split hairs with a small pair of scissors. It's got a sort of zen effect, although if I don't break through the block quickly, I can spend ridiculous amounts of time doing this.

11:21 / 23.11.04

I sort candy by color when eating, and always save a red candy for last.

Me too. Although the last colour savouried depends on the type of sweets:

Opal Fruit (Starbrusts): Red/Strawberry ones last (and that's on the original line up of flavours)

Fruit Pastiles: Black ones last

Skittles (again original flavour): Reds last.

M&Ms: The blue babies are kept till the end (no matter the format of M&M).

As for other Quirk's I'm full of them...

(private joke for myself)

12:59 / 23.11.04

I sort candy by color too, and there must always be the same number of each color, so I eat them in sequence, going through every color.

I do not eat blue M&Ms. I don't believe in them.

I also eat paper.

13:01 / 23.11.04

I like to dip my fingertips in melted candlewax, then peel the wax off, saying,"Look at me, I'm a snake!"

Even though I'm the only one in the room.

14:06 / 23.11.04

I'm not really aware of my own mannerisms or habits, until I'm in a room with my (3 yrs younger) brother and start recognizing myself in hismannerisms. That is FREAKY.

Oh, I remember one. For a while, every time I'd get a beer in a pint glass, I'd turn the glass with my fingers a couple times before lifting it to drink. Then I went drinking with my brother and saw him do it too! It was too weird, I had to nip that one in the bud.

16:14 / 23.11.04

i also sort sweets by colour AND have to eat them so the colour groups have the same number.

i say have to, i dont actully have too y'know? i just really really need to.

and i also stroke my chin when thinking, i think this started as a joke and just ended up staying

16:19 / 23.11.04

and speaking of family mannerisms, my nefew (a really cool 5 year old), was playing with some blocks the other day and at one point he was holding a block with one hand thinking about where to put it, and he was absent-mindedly wiggling the fingers on the other hand. an action that is identical to one that i do.

cute but weird

16:29 / 23.11.04

Ooh - you've reminded me of another thing my brother and I both do the same way, which is shuffle playing cards. We both do the normal shuffle with the bridge - but where most people tap the deck against the table to even the edges, we roll the deck between the thumb and middle finger of one hand. Eerie.

16:39 / 23.11.04

Woodtiger's candlewax speaking reminded me of one of mine: When I water my bonsai tree, I tend to over-water it, so as I mist water on it, I scream "OH NO!! It's a monsooooooooooooon!!!"

Whisky Priestess

16:52 / 23.11.04

You're all fucking weirdos.

Sweetie-sorting: check. I tip them out of the packet, count the number of different types, sort them and eat stray ones until I have exactly the same number of each. Then I eat one of each type so that there are 5 of types a, b and c, then 4 etc. until they're gone.

I play with candles and wax and dip my fingers in it to make wax fingerprints, but only in restaurants.

I eat my pizza by cutting it into slices and then eating the slices from the tip out, cutting into bite-size chunks as I go. This is apparently typical - almost indicative - of a certain personality type on the Myers-Briggs spectrum, but it's the only characteristic of that type I display. (I'm so complex).

I have a two-foot velour turtle in my bedroom which I use as a pillow and an occasional puppet. His name is Tortue and he is a Belgian satyromaniac. He has begun an autogiographical novel, but to be fair I didn't write it.

Out-freak me if you can ...

17:01 / 23.11.04

When I'm walking somewhere and realize I'm going the wrong way, I tend to make a weird little hand gesture like I'm miming pointing out the right way to myself, then I spin on my heel and follow my own directions.

I also tend to tap on things when I walk by: desk (tap)... doorway (tippity)... wall (tap tap tap)... water cooler (tum tum)... stair railing (tong tong tong tong), end post (tip)... etc. And usually in pretty much the same pattern, in familiar places.

Whenever I wash my (preverbal) son's hair, I always tell the same stoopid joke (PM me if you want to hear it - it's too stoopid to post...), adding that I will continue telling the joke every time I wash his hair until he is old enough to tell me "Daddy, stop telling that joke" (and chooses to do so). My wife may kill me before we reach that point, however.

I could go on with the quirks, but it's probably best that I don't.

~L

We're The Great Old Ones Now

17:03 / 23.11.04

punk: i eat paper, not reams of the stuff, just bus tickets and the corners of photocopys, i think it must be the texture i enjoy.

You share your quirk with Sam Cohn of International Creative Management, who once ate a contract he had negotiated over dinner and written on a paper napkin.

17:11 / 23.11.04

I have a two-foot velour turtle in my bedroom which I use as a pillow and an occasional puppet.

[rot]
"Occasional Puppet" should be band name, or an album title. Or something.
[/rot]

Oh, and I sort candy too - M&M's go brown, red, (sometimes blue), orange, green, yellow, (or sometimes blue last). And I eat them in matched pairs, when possible. Also, for whatever reason, I used to chew Cinn*a*burst gum with the wrapper on.

~L

18:27 / 23.11.04

When I light a cigarette with my right hand, and am not shielding it with my left, I don't know what to do with my left hand and so I kinda hold it in a claw-like gripping position, as if I'm holding something invisible.

Like Lepidopteran, I also have a ritualised joke. Whenever I walk through Picadilly Circus, I always say "It's like Picadilly Circus!".

I don't have any routine with coloured sweets, but I once had a pretty hefty Fruit Pastille habit, and getting through about 20 rolls a day I began to learn the order they would come in. I wish I could remember it now, and I haven't put myself to the test in a long time, but I do recall that - 9 times out of 10 - one end starts with a yellow and is followed by a black. And you'd think they'd be packaged randomly from a well jumbled vat, wouldn't you? Made for a halfway decent psychic party-trick at the time.

20:14 / 23.11.04

No, no, no! M&Ms go: brown, orange, yellow, red, green! You sort the package into rows by color, and then, like WP said, you eat the spares until you have the same number of each, then eat them in color sequence to maintain the same number. The best-tasting M&M is that last green one in the package.

THERE ARE NO BLUE M&MS.

(Who knew candy-sorting was such a big thing? I had no clue...)

02:21 / 24.11.04

Oh honestly Sekhmet, everyone knows that the colour priority is brown, yellow, green, red, purple and orange! Also, they're grouped into small round pools, not rows. At least you've got the bit about eating them down into even numbers and then following correct colour sequence for the rest.

I've seen blue M&Ms, but only in special packages. The colours you can custom order from the M&M website clearly don't count as official colours, but are some deviant offspring to be shunned by all true M&M eaters.

A friend of mine in high school used to eat pizza one ingredient at a time. Individual toppings, then cheese, then sauce (bit messy), then the soft dough. Left the crust uneaten. This ritual food thing is pretty common, isn't it?

My brother and I have a joke from our childhood which goes:
"It figures."
"Star wars figures!"

That is the entire extent of the joke. I still find it really amusing, and have been known to call out the punch line on people who use the phrase "it figures" in conversation.

02:47 / 24.11.04

When i was a kid i used to do this thing with Sunday Dinners. Didn't matter what meat. Beef, chicken, lamb. I'd take the meat off the bone and mash it all up with the potatoes, carrots, peas, sprouts, cabbage whatever. Mash it all up with the gravy and smooth it up into a plate shaped pie. All the colours mixed up together so it just turns brown. Then smooth the top of the pie down, like the opposite of that guy in Close Encounters, so it's flat like a pizza and then cut slices like a pizza and eat it.

I'd completley forgotten about this until recently when, at the age of 32, i've suddenly remembered and now get the urge to do it again. Only now i'm a sophisticated, 30s Londonite and my plate is full off asparagus and nicely steamed beans and baby potatoes with herbs and stuff on them.

I just can't that texture or that brown shade back. Help.