Do you have any habits so ingrained you've never talked about them with anyone?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I never had a car runner, but I did share the habit of gnashing my teeth to music stuck in my head. I’ve modified it to clicking now.

I also have a strange “thing” with even numbers, especially 4 and multiples of it, except for those that end with 6, with 16 being the exception to the rule. Didja catch all of that? For instance, the volume on my car stereo can go up to 50 before most others would consider it loud. That gives me a lot of numbers to work with. When I adjust the volume, it always has to stop on an even number, unless it ends in 6. If the volume level is comfortable on a number that ends in 6, it’s acceptable to set it one down, so the number ends in five (which is the only exception to the even numbers rule) but never one up for a number ending in seven. If someone else adjusts the volume, I have to check and make sure it’s on an even number. If it’s not, I will adjust accordingly. My son has actually taken note of this and will always put it on an even number. He must think I’m a freak.

I think I’m a freak.

42

I like the feel of cold metal against my skin. Jewelry, coins, soda cans…I’m always taking off my rings so that they’ll get cold and then putting them back on. I play with coins the same way–put them in the palm of my hand until they get warm, and then put them down til they chill.

I never thought of it as particularly odd–or even thought about it at all until this thread–and now that I see my habit described in words I think it looks totally bizarre.

I have no explanation.

43

I had a car runner also, except mine was a horse. I don’t do it anymore but when I was a kid, I always imagined a horse running alongside the car. This was especially effective when we drove on concrete with breaks in-between the slabs that would make clip-clop noises sort of like a horse’s hoofbeats. Come to think of it, maybe that’s where I got the idea in the first place. Hmm…

I also do the teeth-clicking thing to music.

I do a bizarre thing while reading. Sometimes I catch myself reading lines of dialogue out loud. Luckily, I’ve never done this when anyone else was around. At least I don’t think I have…

44

Add me to those that had a car runner. If there was any water along side the road, whether a ditch or river, my runner was in a boat. He always jumped anything that blocked my view of the water. And if someone did not use their turn signal, he would jump in the car and break off the turn signal lever.

Something else I did was avoid the spears of light from street lights. If I stayed in the dark the spears could not get me. They would show up as we approached the light source, disappear for a second as we passed under the light then reappear as we drove away. It worked best while laying on the back floor of my Mom’s station wagon.

45

I mouth the words to the last sentence I have spoken. According to my parents, I have done this all my life.

I also count steps. Sometimes I count each footfall. Sometimes I count every other footfall.

I always have my finger on that little vertical ridge between my nose and my top lip.

I jiggle my feet ALL THE TIME. In the car, at the computer, waiting in line, etc.

I pick at my cuticles…obsessively.

46

I have a car jumper, too. He’s very tiny, and he can run on grass, but has to jump concrete. He always goes splat when we cross an intersection, because he can’t jump that far. (I say “he”, but he’s really genderless.)

When I look at a digital clock, I’m always playing with the numbers before and after the colon. Like: 5:25–that’s 1/5, 5 is the square root of 25, and et cetera. When I have insomnia, I can do this for hours.

When I’m in a bathroom, I will count tiles, mentally turn them into patterns, etc. When I slept in a room with acoustic tile in the ceiling, I’d count the holes. I always count the number of steps when going up and down the stairs.

I can lay in bed at my parents house and tell who is up and about by the sound of their footsteps (five people other than me in the family). Unfortunately, my youngest sister has started to sound EXACTLY like my dad in recent years. She scared me to death over Christmas because I was wrapping Dad’s present and she came up behind me–thump, thump. I always have a disturbed feeling after that. I want to tell her to get a new walk so I can tell her apart from Dad, but that’s stupid.

I used to bite my fingernails, but I quit two years ago. Now I chew my lips when I’m thinking.

I live alone, so I don’t ever close the bathroom door. Sometimes I have trouble remembering to close it when people come over.

I have an active fantasy life. (Overactive?) If I’m walking or driving somewhere alone, I’m playing out an elaborate scenario in my head with a whole set of people I’ve conjured. It’s like living a whole 'nother life. These scenarios will go on for months until I get bored, and then I’ll come up with another one. Sometimes this scares me, and makes me wonder if I’m some kind of schizoid.

47

Firstly, I find this really fascinating. I used to have far more of these sort of habits when I was younger - I remember thinking about the reflection/bouncing off walls one (but never really did it), and I had a car runner briefly (the ordinary kind - just a person who jumps over stuff). I also did the vertical-line-thing in the car, where I would touch my two fingers together whenever the rearview mirror passed between the center of two things (light poles, trees, etc.), and occaisionally find myself doing that now when I’m not thinking. The most prevalent one, however, I have not been able to lose which is remembering in third person. Like when I think back on conversations, it’ll be from a view like just above and behind my head, sort of looking down.

Oh, and one more - this one was in the New Scientist - if I’m really bored or something while watching someone drone, I can sort of mentally adjust how far away my brain thinks they are, so I can give people monstrous or tiny heads. Apparently, this one is rather common but not very many people talked about it until it was published (don’t have the cite with me now, but if its important I can go look). Does anyone else do this grow/shrink thing? [oh, and an oddity, I can only do it with people, not objects]

It seems like a ton of people have these same strange habits … I wonder why? Oh, and if someone could post if they don’t have have any of these, it would help round it all out … like it seems like everyone does something weird, and it’d be cool to know how common this is.

48

I used to have a car-runner, only now I mostly walk or take the bus (which goes too slow and stops too often to support a car-runner.)

I chew my lips all the time. I like to tear off strips of dead skin with my incisors. If I can’t get the dead skin off with my teeth, I’ll tear it off my my fingernails. Good times.

I wiggle my toes when I am happy, especially when I am reading.

49

This is my first post… I found this thread very interesting, and I thought i should finally break my silence to share some of my (many) idiosyncracies.

My favorite: when there’s a point light source, like a candle or an exposed lightbulb, and I’m bored, I’ll roll my eyes so that the trails from the light make cursive letters in my eye/brain. I almost always start from ‘t’, oddly.

I used to try and mentally re-arrange the letters in words into an ‘ideal’ new word. I made up different rules for what would make it an ideal fit, but generally if the new word had no letters in the same order as the old word, and no letters that were touching in the old word touched in the new, that was close to ideal.

I do count stairs, in patterns of four (1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4)… remnants of violin lessons, I think.

50

I can’t look at a license plate without mentally adding all of the numbers together… and everytime I use a public restroom, I have to sing under my breath “Jimmy Cracked Corn and I Don’t Care…” or else I can’t go…

Oh yeah, and when I’m really bored I itch my eyes really hard and zone out to all of the cool designs my retina makes.

51

Humans each think they are a unique individual. This thread is interesting to me, to see how many extremely personal, unique seeming quirks are actually fairly common – and may be artifacts of the way our brains are wired. We are all much more alike than we’d ever care to realize.

52

Wow I am not a freak- I do this all the time too

53

My “car-runner” used to be my imaginary “mousies”… they had really fast vehicles and would also collect grain from the wild grass or fibers from milkweed/thistles to make food or clothing.

Now, there’s just an indefinable “someone/thing” out there.

54

I too am a SDMB newbie and have to break my silence with a sigh of relief that I am not completely insane…

i can’t believe it!! I am not the only one with a car-runner!!

also, I have this weird calender thing in my head where I can “see” the days of the week. It’s like a block of space with 7 sections…can’t say or think of a day without “seeing” it in my head

55

I have the same thing with days of the week! Also, I see months of the year as a sort of circle, with each month being a piece of pie. That’s the best I can describe it, at least. All time is like that to me… it has a physical space in my mind.

56

I don’t know if this counts as weird or anything, but after I’ve finished reading the newspaper (remember newspapers?) in the evening, I have to tear it up. Starting with page 1 of section A, I tear each page (vertically) into inch-wide strips. I’d never really thought about the activity itself before. I guess that’s because time seems to stop while I’m doing it. I’ll have finished reading the paper and begun to tear that first sweet strip from the front page, and then an hour and a half or so (depending on the size of the day’s paper & the number of fliers) has past. I’m just left with this huge pile of paper strips piled around my feet. And then I count the strips.

I guess it’s pretty normal, but I think the guy who picks up the recycling might wonder a bit.

Coffeeguy

57

Thanks, Phoebestar…now I have to start doing the month-as-piece-of-pie thing. :slight_smile:

58

I have the day of the week thing too and they’re all different colours. When im thinking about something thats going to happen soon in another week i have to imagine it as some kind of long strip and trace the days along it in my mind.

I have a thing thats kinda like the the car runner, only i do it with my own feet or toes. I have a slight variation on this too, when there are bits of grass on opposite sides of the road my left foot can only go down when i reach the left piece and my right foot goes down when i reach the bit on the right side, and i imagine a slanting line between them… this is getting hard to describe so I’m not sure i can.

I also have the thing where i click my teeth to a song only i can make different teeth make different notes. At least thats how it sounds in my head. I often press into the thicker bits of skin alongside my nail with my thumb nail and bite off the bits of skin on my lips. A lot of people seem to have these too.

59

I, too, have always had a car-running guy. Mine, however, is a James Bond type with gadgets to get him through the rough sopts, and is always being chased by an endless supply of faceless “bad guys” who are always just about to catch up when they fall victim to a ditch, post, or other obstacle.

Oh, and I’m with Audrey Levins…thank goodness my wedding band is a good conductor and cools quickly!

I also play number and word games in my head with licence plates. Not just adding, but averaging, finding the mode and median of the numbers, etc. I play with my vital numbers as well. My drivers license number is stored in my head as the squares of two successive numbers, a 2 digit number, and then half of that same 2 digit number (8 digits in all).

I remember phone numbers as keystroke patterns.

Clouds never look like bunnies, or puppies, or horsies. They always look like states or countries or continents. I can’t tell you how many New Jersey- or Great Britian- shaped clouds I’ve seen.

60

I remember phone numbers like that, too, caveman! I was at a New Year’s Eve party, and we needed to contact a friend who hadn’t shown up yet. I was the only one who would know her phone number, and I thought I remembered it, but I was only sure when I put my right hand out and tapped out a button sequence with my thumb. :slight_smile: