A Few Strange Habits
Okay, I'll admit it, I'm a little idiosyncratic. Not Sandwiches Are The Devil Idiosyncratic, but I have my own neuroses. I must reunite infinitives that have been torn asunder by homewrecker adverbs. (Those whores.) Making tea, I always rinse out the mug with hot water before I add the tea bag and fill it. Must must must. I brush my teeth at work after lunch. (Well, that one's just good hygiene.) Ummmm....that's about it.
Maybe I'm not that idiosyncratic, after all.
posted by kStyle @ 4:28 PM
8 Comments:
Those are good ones! Maybe we should get "OCD Club" tee shirts. ;)
You're absolutely right, that is how you're supposed to make tea. (Also helps ensure that there is no dishwasher soap residue in your teacup.) It's plunged into Neurosisville, however, when you have to reign yourself in from asking a hostess offering tea to make sure she rinses your cup with hot water. For example.
I think it would be fantastic if a float fan club adopted our collective neuroses. What does it say that I was like, Hey, that's a pretty good washcloth system, and you were all, but hell, baby, you're supposed to rinse the teacup!
Interesting observation about order, Emma. I would argue that there used to be a lot more institutionalized order/rituals than there are now. For example, it seems my generation does not go to church as much as generations past. And in religion you get all these great little rituals. For example, myself being raised Catholic there was lots of saying amen, genuflecting, and making the sign of the cross. Not so much anymore that I don't go to Mass. I wonder, then, if perhaps there's some intrinsic human need for these little rituals--more pronounced in some people than in others--and whether if, without the opportunity to get it out in some sanctified way, one makes damn well sure that her teacup is rinsed.
PS Emma, you might be pleased/relieved to hear that, despite my teacup-rinsing quirk, my condo is a total mess and we still haven't unpacked some boxes. We moved a year ago.
Though I'm still getting lambasted for my sandwich confession, herewith some more oddities and quirks from the Land of Eric:
1. I only pay for things with ten-dollar bills, which means I have to throw away the change.
2. For the first two weeks I know a woman, I call her Georgina.
3. I never use the same spoon twice. But I use the same fork twelve times in a row, then wash it, then twelve more times, leave it outside overnight, then twelve more times, then a new fork.
4. Each year on his birthday, I send Dick Clark a card and a photo of myself.
5. I keep a copy of Merleau-Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception" in my glove compartment, on top of my registration but underneath my AAA card. Passages relevant to nighttime driving have been dog-eared.
6. Rubbing my earlobes makes the voices go away.
The Dick Clark tradition is cute. Maybe I'll join in.
As there has been some uncertainty about this, I note for the record that the items on my list are not, in fact, real quirks of mine. Just a little humor I was floating out there.
I swear that in my head as I was writing, all of it sounded very obviously unserious (particularly the Dick Clark one). But I think it's sweet of everybody to want to preserve my feelings, and keep to themselves the suspicion that I had gone mentally astray.
My actual quirks have more to do with taking out the garbage more often than is probably necessary, or making my books easy to locate by spine color, or, like Ann, starting up my computer applications in the same order every morning.
And then there is my staunch refusal to employ the Shuffle feature on my iPod, but as that is a long and principled rant, I shall save it for another time.
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