I have a strange little habit. It’s harmless, it’s small, it has no measurable effect on my life, and I never talk about it to anyone because it has become so ingrained in me that I hardly ever consciously think about it myself.
Whenever I’m sat at my computer reading and interacting with message boards and mailing lists on the net, there’s always a corner of my mind that’s occupied with picturing a certain real-life place that I frequent, usually a space no more than a few feet across (the place varies from message board to message board). In this place in my mind there’s usually a tiny ball bouncing from surface to surface, tracing a line through the air as it goes, creating irregular geometric shapes in the environment. I have no idea whatsoever why I do this, but I suspect that it might be something my brain cooked up to help me concentrate (an entirely unscientific guess, based only on speculation and gut feeling).
Whenever I browse the SDMB, for example, I’ll picture the home of the guy who introduced me to the SDMB. Sometimes the ball will bounce all the way upstairs to the second floor, though oddly enough that usually only happens in the Pit. When I’m in Cafe Society, however, the ball bounces happily around in the kitchen. MPSIMS and IMHO get the bathroom treatment, for some reason. Sometimes there isn’t even a ball bouncing around – I’ll just picture the room.
I’m bringing this up here because I just realized a couple of weeks ago, upon mentioning this bouncing ball o’ joy to a friend during the course of a conversation, that I had never ever told anyone about this before. Not because I was ashamed of it in any way, but more because it’s just so completely ingrained in me that it’s never seemed like anything to talk about, really.
When I suddenly realized that this “phenomenon,” for lack of a better word, was something I’d never heard of nor read of anywhere else (nor had my friend), I began to wonder if perhaps there were other people who do the same thing and never even stop to think about it. Better yet, do others have little mind-habits of their own that they’ve unconsciously cultivated beyond even their own capacity to notice in everyday life?
When I’m walking, I count my steps in sets of eight. This is mostly on stairs, but sometimes when I’m walking longer distances by myself, too. Where it comes from is no mystery: I was a marching band geek for six years. We did what’s called an 8-to-5 step (eight steps per every five yards), and it was drilled into our heads, and evidently in my day-to-day life. It’s like having an internal tattoo of eternal geekdom.
When I walk long distances (farther than from the cube to the crapper), I mentally hum a song I’ve been listening to that day that’s gotten stuck in my head. I match the rhythm of my steps to that of the song or vice versa.
At least I hope it’s only mentally. Maybe that’s why everybody looks at me funny.
Whenever I enter a room (always when i haven’t seen it before, or other times when I’m bored), if it’s irregularly shaped or has a door to a hallway, stairwell, etc…
I imagine being this thing that can bounce off the walls back and forth. Each bounce brings you slightly more to the side. I try to see if the bouncing object (usually a person, oddly enough, but stretched out like Superman) can cover all of the room (just bouncing, say, from the north wall to the south wall, pushing off the south wall back to the north wall; you start at the western wall and work your way to the eastern wall) and exit it to the hallway et al without retracing the paths you’ve already covered. You’re allowed a couple “jumps” to skip over a door and start back if necessary.
I have no idea if that makes any sense to anyone but me. And now that I think about it, it’s a REALLY WEIRD thing to do.
I have a mild thing with numbers, too. When I fill the washing machine thing with fabric softener, I have to use 4, and EXACTLY 4, cups of water to reach the top. If I do 4 cups and it’s not at the top, oh well. If i overfill it, oh well, I need to have 4 cups there.
I also do elabourate finger drumming. Using the index and ring fingers of both hands, I have these patterns that will vary, along with the strength of the tap, and I’ll alter the pattern with using my nails for a clicking sound. When I had nothing to do at work (back when I was working at a gas station), I could literally stand for 5-10 minutes just working on one rhythm. Oddly enough, other than that I feel that I have no sense of music whatsoever.
if I’m a passenger in a car, and I don’t have anything to read or whatnot, I imagine that there’s a person keeping up with the car on the street. The person can run on grass and raised concrete, but when there’s a dip for a driveway, a street, etc, they have to JUMP over it to the next grass or concrete area. If it’s too far, they can reach for powerlines to whip around.
Wow. I do the imaginary bouncing ball thing kind of too, thought I was the only one.
Not always just on the computer, but often when I’m bored I’ll think more along the lines of imagining a laser directed from me to some point in the room, and reflecting off the walls. I’ll trace its imaginary path around the room. Don’t associate it with different boards much, but I notice I ALWAYS do it at the movies, as the screen is curved and it keeps me busy trying to figure out where to direct the beam so as to reflect it to the walkway leading outside.
Holy crap, that makes perfect sense to me, but I just realized how insane I sound.
You know the reflecter poles along side most roads, the 4 foot tall, usually, white plastic thingies with the orange reflecter on them.
When I’m driving I will draw an imaginary line from one pole across the road to a point between the two poles on that side and back to the next pole on the side where I started. I can keep this up while driving and talking for miles it seems.
I have no trouble stopping and as far as I can tell it infringes on neither my driving nor talking.
I have something similar to the OP going on. For some reason certain topics always evoke images of certain places in my mind. Variations on these topics will often produce variations in the scene, such as seeing them from another angle. Often these scenes are of places where I was when I was thinking about the topic, but they rarely have anything to do with it directly. Sometimes they have no connection whatsoever, though, such as my association of Palm PDA’s and a particular hallway in a school my father used to teach at (which I haven’t seen since I was a young child).
I also always - and I mean always - have a song or a tune in my head. I did once tell a friend about this and she spent the next few weeks randomly asking me what song was in my head. She was fascinated by it. Go figure.
I count the sidewalk squares by three to fifteen (3, 6, 9, 12, 15) Streets and driveways should always be “12” in my count. I can modify the count by counting “6, 12…” “2, 4, 6, 12…” as long as it ends up with the street being “12” and it is a rational progression of numbers i.e. doubled, count by a number, double and add a number; as long as it is consistent to get to “12”
Curbs count, grass does not count. Stairs count. Cracked sidewalk squares still count as one, although smaller cobblestones/pavers may be counted separately or as a whole but the decision has to be made before setting foot on that portion of ground.
I also have started imagining a Spiderman like figure jumping from roof to roof as I stare out the window of the El downtown
I am SO insane.
i have this habit of licking the cotton on a qtip and then tightening it in a counterclockwise motion before it goes into my ear. i do this with the cotton on both ends before they go into each ear. i dont know why. my sister thinks its sick, and i dont know why. if anything went into my mouth after i had used it to clean my ear, then i’d see a problem. sigh oh well, at least i know that i’m not the only mentally deranged person on this board.
Whenever I’m watching TV (or just sitting down, for that matter,) with my feet up on a coffee table or chair or whatever, I imagine what would happen if suddenly gravity were reversed so that the wall that I’m facing would become my ‘floor’. Often times, if there is a lot of junk on the wall, like cabinets, etc. I have to imagine what I would do to avoid landing on them in the unlikely event that gravity actually shifts. I also take into consideration things like where I would put my feet so that I don’t smash through the TV screen, thus making it impossible for me to watch “general hospital” or whatever. It seems really silly because I know this would never happen, but I just can’t stop myself from generating these hypothetical gravity situations.
Darn, I was going to say that, except for me, it’s the ceiling that becomes the floor. I look for handholds, or grip my chair such that I can whip it “underneath” me quickly. On more than one occasion, this has made me nervous while outside. Fortunately, I don’t do it as much anymore.
Here’s something interesting that I actually have talked to a couple of people about (when, in fact, we were having a discussion about this particular topic.)
Sometimes, when I’m lying in bed and can’t sleep, I’ll lie flat on my back and close my eyes and attempt to block out the rest of the world. Then, I start imagining that my bed is slowly swaying back and forth, like a giant swing that I’m laying down on. I get so cought up in the image that my body starts to adjust its weight anticipating the acceleration down at each end. This causes a kind of feedback loop where my brain then makes the arch of the swing bigger and bigger, and soon enough I’m FLYING!
But none of this is a dream, as it all happens when I’m perfectly conscious. It’s very calming, kind of like a type of meditation.
Similar to mine. I picture the car jumping driveways and streets and other dips.
I also don’t like to step on cracks, despite being scornful of the whole “break your mother’s back” thing as a child.
Whatever I do to the left side of my body I have to do to the right and vice versa. Have to keep it equal. I go crazy trying to replicate unintentional bumps and things so that they hit with the same force on what feels like the exact opposite spot.
When going to sleep, I picture myself lying on a beach, with the water creeping up around me. The water is sleep. As the waves wash over me, they gently drag me out to sea. This seems like a relaxation technique that I’ve developed for myself at some point in my life.
Thank you, Presidebt, for making me feel slightly less odd. I do the same thing.
I also have a habit, from early childhood, of imagining that my life is a film. I watch what I’m doing from the perspective of an imaginary camera, and it follows me everywhere. When it’s a low-light situation, such as the freeway at night, I think of ways the camera could compensate…and I picture how the interior of my car looks on film as the freeway lights streak past. Even when I’m crying/upset/emotionally overwrought, etc., there is still some small part of my mind running this imaginary camera through the whole scene. I see myself looking really upset, and I wonder if it’s “translating” on film the way I’m feeling it.
WTF? I’ve never told anyone that. Why on EARTH do I do this.
Finally, I gnash my teeth to rhythms of songs that aren’t currently playing…it’s totally unconscious until my jaw starts to hurt.
I wonder where the hell I got these bizarre habits from…
I don’t know, but wherever you did, we probably ran into each other there. I do both these things as well, though I’m more apt to imagine my life as a TV show rather than a film, and I don’t really do that very often these days.
The teeth thing I’ve done for a long long time, only I don’t gnash - I click rhythmically. I’ve gotten quite good at it, if I do say so myself. If they had a tooth-clicking rhythm competition, I could probably do pretty well for myself.
What’s amazing me right here is not the fact that the habits in these threads are strange, but more the fact that so many people seem to have them in such similar forms.
Why does no one ever talk about these things? Are they so integral to our perception that they sail right under our conscious radar? Or do we think at some level “That’s just weird,” and decide it’s probably a good idea not to talk with anyone about them?
