I live in an apartment building where you the door you come in from the street through closes leisurely behind you. This will be relevant in a moment, bear with me. You are immediately faced with stairs once in side. Each floor is broken into two landings, one where doors are, and every other one sort of in between floors, a turning around point.
Here’s how it works: as the door closes leisurely, it’s possible to get quite a ways up the stairs before it slams shut. My superstitious self-declared-out-of-nothing-at-all “ritual” dictates that if you are on one of the steps when the door slams shut, you get negative “points”. Should you be on a landing, you get positive “points”. The higher up the stair or the landing, the greater the reward/penalization. So you can see that going for a dramatic win means reaching a higher up landing while braving equally high up stairs. I hope I made the rules clear.
What these “points” mean practically I have no idea…some vague association with bad karma or bad luck. The strange thing is, I really am NOT a superstitious or religious person…I don’t even take this seriously, if I “lose” and wind up on a step really high up when that door slams, it’s not a huge deal. It has the weight of say, losing a card game. OTOH, when I make it to a really high landing, I feel a sense of liberation and a feeling of good things on the horizon.
Am I nutz? Don’t answer that, answer this instead:
Does anyone else have similar internal games/rituals?
I also have a thing with sidewalk cracks, alternating right and left feet and never stepping on cracks (yawn).
In my usual style I will respond to the title before reading the OP…
I used to have a thing about checking the bathroom door is locked before I go to the loo…
I would go to the loo, lock the door, walk to the toilet, walk back to the door, check it’s locked, walk back to the toilet, walk back to the door, check it’s locked again, finally walk back to the toilet and do my business.
Now our toilet door doesn’t have a lock on it. I often go to the toilet and leave the door ajar. It’s a door that you need to turn the handle and force it slightly to shut it. I guess laziness took on insanity and won.
My mother can’t walk down stairs without touching the ceiling (the bit which is within reach about halfway down the stairs in most british style terraced houses)
Whenever I leave work I HAVE to look in a certain drawer, even though I know exactly what’s in there, I know I haven’t put anything new in there that day, nothing new has appeared in there since I last looked half an hour ago, but I HAVE to look in that drawer.
I used to do this. If I stepped on a crack with one foot (and it ALWAYS had to be in the middle of the foot), I would have to step on a crack with the other foot (in the middle, too). If the squares were big enough, I would make sure I made the same number of steps in each square.
Whenever I descend a staircase, I always skip the last step, jumping from the second-to-last step straight to the landing. I don’t skip any other steps when descending (I probably subconciously consider it too dangerous), but the last step is never honoured with the presence of my foot.
When ascending, on the other hand, I usually skip every other step. Unlike my descending ritual, this one might actually make a scrap of sense by saving me a precious few seconds.
When I was 16, my then-best friend gave me a piece of rose quartz that I dubbed my “lucky rock” and would carry everywhere with me. If there was something I really, really desired, I would kiss the lucky rock. Amazingly, it seemed to work.
I carried this lucky rock in my pocket everywhere until March 2003, when my husband needed some luck. I then gave it to him, and in typical form, he promptly lost it. He told me it didn’t matter and if it was truly lucky it would have helped him. After carrying it for 8 years, to lose it like that! I guess there’s a good reason for his being by soon to be ex husband.
But anyway I bought another piece of rose quartz at a store in japan. I began treating it the same way. However this lucky rock seemed totally devoid of any special luck, so I recently stopped carrying it.
I also have weird superstitions about turning lights off in a certain order before I go to sleep, but this is due to a life-long fear of the dark: I turn them off in an order that causes me not to have to walk very far in total darkness.
Before I go to bed, none of the drawers, cupboards, doors or any other similar devices in the room I’m sleeping in can be open - not even a crack. If I turn off the lights, climb into bed [I have a loft bed that I need to ascend a ladder to get to], and notice via moonlight or street lamp light or whatever that one of my cupboards is open just a little bit, I’ll have to climb back down, turn on the light [the light is crucial even though I can obviously see whatever I’m trying to close], shut the offending thingy and climb back up into bed. Some nights this needs to be repeated up to 5 times if a lot of things are open and I keep noticing them. There’s also a chair with a pillow on it in my room and I can’t sleep if the pillow isn’t perched upon it in exactly the right position. And finally, I cannot sleep if I do not have a perfectly clear line of vision from my head to whatever illuminated alarm clock is in the room I’m in.
Oh, and none of the above quirks have anything to do with neatness or a need to know what time it is when I wake up or anything remotely reasonable/sane like that. They are all driven by a superstitious “If-you-dont-do-this-tonight-BAAD-things-will-happen!!!” inner voice.
I have this thing about the moon. When full, I go outside (usually later in the evening before I go to bed) and completely strip. We have high fences so no neighbors have witnessed me (I think). I walk around my pool in a clock-wise direction three times before I put my clothes back on and head into the house.
WHOOSH!
I do go outside to view it (I just have to say “hello”, if you will) but I’m not really naked and I NEVER, EVER go near a dark, creepy pool much less walk around it three times in a clock-wise direction. I’ve always loved the moon and when it’s orange or even reddish, I feel something good’s going to happen. That my luck is changing for the better. I have to look at the moon, I look for it every night even if it’s just a sliver of light. When there’s nothing to be seen, I feel strangely wistful. I miss it, I guess. Now, I have NO illusions of being some sort of lycanthrope so don’t rush me off to the asylum just yet. I just really love looking at the moon. The moon is cool, so there.
Well, it’s not superstitious, but very odd and vaguely obsessive-compulsive nonetheless.
Whenever I go to pour a glass of milk, I blow lightly across the mouth of the open jug. Not for the purpose of making a noise or anything, though - it’s to blow the old air out of the container.
It came about because of one experience with almost-bad milk and a hangover about fifteen years ago. Since then, it’s habit - I know full well that the milk is good (we go through about a gallon every two days) but I literally can’t pour the milk unless I blow across the opening.
The odd thing is that it’s only if I’m pouring the milk - somebody else can pour it and I have no problem (although I do sniff it first) and I don’t have to blow on it unless it’s a one-gallon plastic milk jug. Paper? No problem. A half-gallon? No problem.
Weird.
Oh, and my other weird compulsion: if I’m sitting down on the toilet for a good poop and I’ve got a book or paper with me, I can’t let myself start to poop until I’m at the page and paragraph I left off at, or at a good article. I actually get mad at myself if I accidently start before I’ve got to my place.
No t superstittious, but kinda wierd and obsessive. When I eat waffles, I have to have syrup in every square. If there’s not, forget it. I’ll just skip eating. And when I cut my waffle up, each piece has to have four squares in it. If there are not four squares left (eggos never come out right! :rolleyes: ) then it has to be in multiples of two. Also, when I eat small candy like skittles or M&M’s, I have to have one for each side of my mouth. If I only eat one at a time then I have to eat one on one side of my mouth, and the next on the other side of my mouth.
Whenever I cross the street, I have to make sure I’m on the sidewalk before a car will pass me. I cannot cross if there is a car coming that looks like it will pass me before I get to the sidewalk. I usually wait till not cars are visible before crossing.
I never step on cracks, either, and always step on new pavement squares with my right foot. I always start a flight of steps with my right foot, I step out doorways with my right foot, and if I come to a change of pavement (the street from the sidewalk, or a grassy patch, or a brick area changing to concrete), I always have to step onto the new bit with my right foot.
When I do laundry and hang up the shirts, the front of the shirt must be to the “left” on the hanger.
Before I leave the house, I have to make sure all the doors are closed. I have dogs and I don’t want them to get into the rooms when we are gone. I know they are closed because i automatically shut them behind me, but even when I step outside, I have to go back in to make sure.
When my husband and I leave together, even though I hear him close the door and I can hear the click of the lock, I have to push on the door to make sure it is locked. He left it open one time while we were gone, and my dogs got out. Luckily they didn’t run off.
I have dumb things too like, I try to do things before my air conditioner turns on. Like i’f i’m going into the kitchen, I always say “If i could just make it before the a/c cuts on…”
I don’t step on the cracks in sidewalks, but it isn’t because of the kid’s game. If I’m going any distance walking on a sidewalk it bothers me to not have a whole number of steps in each square. I don’t know why, but I just have to have a whole number.
This could be my marching band training coming back to haunt me, or the fact that I’m left-handed, but I always start walking on my left foot. If I reach a stairwell, I’ll awkwardly shuffle til the first step is taken with the left foot.
I don’t know if this counts, but I’m completely anal about things matching. If I’m wearing khakis and a purple shirt, the socks under the penny loafers must be purple. I once took a sweater from Kansas to Seattle on a quest for matching socks. Still have the sweater; haven’t found the perfect socks.
I should note that the trip to Seattle wasn’t specifically for socks; we were visiting Mr. Kat’s side of the family. But since I’m the one who dragged Mr. Kat 2 hours away from home hunting for a lipstick that wasn’t available yet in our fair city, it wouldn’t have been entirely out of character.
Reading this thread reminded me of a couple of others…
When I go to the toilet, if there are any faces on newspapers or magazines I have to cover them or turn them over.
When I am drinking tea and eating biscuits or cake, the tea MUST be the last thing I have. If I’ve drank all my tea and still have cake I’ll either leave the cake or make another cup of tea.
I can’t sleep with my feet under the covers if I am on my side, even if it’s cold.
Not really a weird habit this but for some reason I just thought of it. If eating a meal consisting of many different parts I must get as many different parts onto each forkfull, the more parts the smaller each part has to be on the fork. As a kid I did the opposite, eating all of each part before starting the rest.
I am racking my brains to think of more. I must be wierder than this. I probably had a lot of weird habits years ago that I have lost and forgotten about. I guess I am now just too lazy to have wierd habits.
I have this fear that I’ll be locked out of the house. This is due to the fact that I forgot my house keys in the house once. But now it’s some deep fear. I’ll carry my house keys with me to the mailbox or anytime I go outside of the house when I’m home alone—even though the doors are clearly unlocked. It’s like I fear some force will lock the doors while I’m outside.
Yes! The video store slightly disturbs me because I see all those celebrities staring at me from their movie box homes.
But I understand where you’re coming from with the bathroom thing. There’s a restaurant we go to that has a bunch of pictures on the wall. What’s really disturbing is on one of the stall doors in the Ladies room is a picture of Burt Reynolds pointing at you and it says, “He wants YOU To Have His Baby”. AAAHHHH!
When I was a kid I liked to pretend that I was the hero in one of those war movies where you’re sneaking around behind enemy lines. The idea was that you didn’t want the German patrol to see you. The patrol was any car that happened to be coming down the road that our house was on. There were two forms of the ritual: one was to plan my movements around the yard such that there was always something between me and the passing car. The other one was that I had to be inside the house before the car passed our driveway. I couldn’t visibly hurry or do anything obviously unnatural, but if I wasn’t inside the house in time, the patrol spotted me.
That was when I was 10-12 years old maybe. Now I’m 45 years old and I live in an apartment building. If I am approaching the building, and I’m aware that there is somebody else some way behind me, also approaching the building, that other person becomes The Assassin and I must escape from him. I escape if there is always a closed door between us from the time I first enter the building until I am safely in my apartment. So, after I enter the building and the front door closes behind me, I have to have entered the stairwell and have the stairwell door close behind me before the other guy opens the front door. Then I have to go through the door to my floor before the assassin opens the stairwell door. Finally I have to have my apartment door closed and locked behind me before the assassin emerges from the stairwell (if he’s even going to my floor). Another successful mission! Of course I have to do all of the above while acting completely naturally and not hurrying in any perceptible way.
