Beyond the Book: Quirks and Oddities

“Do you have any habits that your family or friends consider odd?”

To answer this question I asked my husband if he could think of anything odd about me. He said, “If you’ve been doing something odd I’ve gotten used to it so it doesn’t seem odd anymore.” So he was no help to me at all. My son did think of a few things, though.

He thinks it’s odd that I have phone glasses and regular glasses. When I talk on the phone, I usually pull off my regular glasses and put on another pair. I’m very particular about my glasses. I won’t let anyone touch them, not even when I go to have an eye checkup. I take a case with me and put the glasses in the case that I put in my purse. If anyone does touch them I imagine that they don’t fit right for days. I guess that’s the reason for phone glasses. I don’t want the phone to touch the ones I wear everyday. 

My son also mentioned that I like what he calls tapping straws. Once long ago I had a bendy straw in a glass of Coke that I had just finished. I was working on lesson plans at the time, and somehow I pulled the straw out and began tapping the desk with it. I also rolled it between my fingers and stared down the length of it. For some reason that helped me think. I finished my lesson plan in record time, and it was good. That one afternoon convinced me of the power in the tapping straw. My son laughed at me, but before long he tried it and told me that it really did help. He still thinks it’s weird, though. 

Another little quirk I have is that I often can’t keep myself from reading the end of a book before I read the first part. It doesn’t seem to ruin the story for me. I still want to know how the ending came about. I’ve tried to break myself of this bit of oddness, and I find that reading ebooks helps me to start at the beginning and not the end. I’ve been doing very well so maybe soon I can read normally. 

The last thing I can think of is that I don’t like for my routine to be disrupted. I’m sure there are a lot of people who like routine so this may not really be odd. It can put my day off kilter if something unexpected happens. My sister always took me to task about this one. She liked unexpected changes. I think she considered them an adventure. Truly, I wish I was more that way, and since I’ve retired I may have made a little progress at embracing the unexpected. Mostly though I still don’t like it. 

What about you? Do you have any odd little quirks?