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

In My Humble Opinion
81

I had a car runner when I was younger, but instead of running on the ground, he ran on the telephone cables in the air next to the road, and had to jump whenever he reached a pole. Not coincidentally, he only showed up on roads that had these cables.

I do the movie/TV show thing, too. I often see my daily life as a TV show, and any kind of special event will be a movie version of the show. The one thing I particularly enjoy is imagining the opening credit sequences for my life. For the TV show, this involves picking a couple images of each main character, as done in many sitcom openings such as on Friends. The problem is that there are too many “main characters” in my life, so I have different versions depending on whether this episode takes place at work or at home, featuring the appropriate people.

For movie versions, I pick a song and try to match the music to the credits and decide when the movie starts. For example, is the first shot me leaving the house to drive to the airport, or does the movie not start until I’m landing. (Actually, since I like imagining the beginning so much, I often have it start twice or more.) The tone of the song has to match the tone of the plot, but since I don’t know what exactly is going to happen, the opening song will match the “expected” plot, and the closing song for the fade out and end credits will match the “actual” plot. Bonus points if there’s a dramatic contrast between the two.

If there’s a person I haven’t seen in a long time, he’s a “special guest star” returning to the show for a while, and all the old fans who’ve watched for years will remember him and be glad to see him, but the newer viewers won’t know who he is.

When I have occasion to watch home videos we’ve taken over the years, it’s a clip show.

Actually, I don’t do the TV show much anymore. I’ve mostly moved on to a different weird thing, which I haven’t seen mentioned yet:

I imagine that somebody else is in my body. They see what I see and hear what I hear. Then I try to think about how the person would react to what he or she is experiencing. The person varies depending on my mood. It can be a close friend or family member, or a casual acquaintance (“What would he think if he knew I did this?” or “I bet she would really enjoy/hate what I’m doing now.”). Other times it’s a stranger from the past or future (“How amazing/backward a television would be!”)

There’s an associated setup fantasy where a scientist builds the experimental machine that allows you to experience someone else’s life, and whatever person I have chosen is the test candidate who tries it out.

This machine conveniently and automatically shuts off whenever I do anything I wouldn’t want anyone to witness, even in a fantasy. :slight_smile:

82

I started off reading this thread and thinking, “these people are strange… or maybe I am because these seem to be common experiences”. Then I remembered that:

When I’m lying in bed and can’t sleep I’ll lie on my back with my arm extended straight up above my head. Then I’ll try and relax it completely so that my hand hits my forehead. I always try and keep the most minimal control of my arm so that it falls with full weight but lands predictably on my forehead.

Also I squint a little when I have tears in my eyes to make street lights spread out into big crosses.

I used to get mesmorised by watching powerlines or the wires of fences while on long drives as a passenger.

83

Another weird thing I do is whenever I go to bed, I hide under the covers and pretend someone’s attacking me (space-ships, mostly), and my blanket is an all-powerful shield. It’s fun.

84

I do this exactly! I thought I was the only one!

I’ve noticed I do variations on it. Usually the point where I have to part my teeth is when the object is overlapped by the boundary between the windshield and the side window.

Sometimes it’ll be my tongue coming off the roof of my mouth instead of my teeth parting. Sometimes I don’t move at all and just imagine going “on” and “off”.

85

I can’t leave stuffed animals in uncomfortable positions. For example, my son’s monkey… if it is sitting with its leg twisted behind its back, I have to fix it.

86

Holy Crap, aramis! I do this too, but didn’t say so for fear of being too weird! The other night when I went to pick up a bag of cat food, I had to expalin to Thomas Jefferson why Americans now spend so damn much on pets!

freaky!

87

Ah! Same here, only with me it’s subtly different. I’ve always seen numbers in a physical dimension, only it’s not circular – it’s a huge line that extends infinitely heavenwards, branching out ever-so-slightly to the right or left at intervals of the number 10 (e.g. right at 20, left at 30, right at 40, etc.). Bizarre.

Bingo! Wow, this one was so ingrained I’d even forgotten about it when I wrote the OP. I do this exact same thing, though its frequency has kind of diminished over the last few years. Maybe I should take it up again – as I recall, it was pretty nice to have an imagined spectator so interested in your life that they would spend hour upon hour watching you perform the most mundane of life’s tasks.

This killed me. Props, scablet.

88

Yikes! Caught in a copy-paste scandal.

That last quote was, of course, posted by scablet and not Phoebestar.

Preview is my… oh, sod it.

89

I do a variation of caveman and aramis’s explaining thing. It’s not to anyone specific, but like I’m teaching a class. And always technical subjects. While some people are walking down the street and have a song or narrative running through their head, I’m explaining how DNS works or what an intercooler is. I find it helps me retain knowledge, especially when I’m learning something new.

I also visualize the coming weeks in my head. It’s obviously hard to explain, but days I’m off from work or breakup my routine are dark – like they’re in a shadow. Each week kind of has a unique feel to it. And if my plans change I can see/feel the old week morphing into what the new one is going to look like.

I’m pretty sure this comes from the calendars my school district used to mail home when I was a kid. The days school was in session were white, and the days we had off were shaded.

90

I like symmetrical things. If something isn’t symmetrical, I rearrange it, mentally or phyically, so it is symmetrical.
I chew equal amounts of food with both sides of my mouth.

Oddly I try to divide any number I see by 3. If the number is not divisible, I figure out what is the closest number divisible by 3.

Do not get me started on my nails. I like to dig at the skin along the sides of my nail beds. Currently my right middle finger has a ridge of thick hard skin which runs along both sides of the nail.
I have nearly no nails on my right foot. Too much clipping and digging.

91

When I’m alone in an elevator I must touch each wall panel going around in a circle. I do this really quickly and repeat it as many times as possible.

When ever there is a full moon I turn into a wolf and go out and devour a virgin female.

On my dry erase calander I have to draw little pictures in all the holidays.

92

Aren’t we a quirksome bunch! And I thought I was all alone. :stuck_out_tongue: I would venture that this is more common than rare tho’, especially due to the responses in this thread.

I do tooth percussion; to the rhythm of songs in my head, but my favorite is making a ‘galloping’ noise by means of a clever ‘scrape and click’ method. shaking my head at the sound of this
heheh

I have an ‘engine’ that is usually running, usually by means of bouncing one leg while sitting or drumming my fingers so that each one never hits the surface at the same time. It tends to make an even, purr-like sound.

I will often regulate my breathing between power poles when driving.

Mrs eNiGma always knows when if I’m speeding and have seen a police. I will tap the steering wheel very rapidly with my right hand. She always gets a kick out of it…

If two (or more) things are not symmetrical, I must fix them… a terrible bane…sometimes I can only do it mentally because it would look too odd if I did it physically every time.

93

Ok, I should have never opened and read this thread.

Now I have a bouncing red ball in my mental picture and not just one car runner, but two. One on each side of my car.

I can only hope this is a phase.

And maybe if I can send back some of the torture to you bastiges: ** I count going up and down stairs in german, then spanish, then english. **

94

ROFL.
In all seriousness, you really need to some how work this into a resume or job interview. :smiley:

95

I had no sense at all of what this car-runner business was about, so I asked my son if he knew what y’all were talking about. He said, “I used to do that!” Only his guy was on a bicycle—something about spikes on the tires, too. We started giggling too much for him to finish. Very strange, and very cool!

I was thinking I don’t have any strange quirks, but the longer I thought about it…

I need something to read in the bathroom. If I don’t have anything, I will read a dollar bill, or a clothing tag. I play this game of finding all the letters of the alphabet on it. I have also counted ceiling tiles, or floor tiles – only whole ones allowed!

When I can’t sleep, I will imagine drafting letters in ink. (In the good old days, that’s how you drafted!) Very slowly, first the capital, then the lower case. Sometimes I will do cursive.

96

When I thought about it long enough, I realized that whenever I look at telephone wires, I imagine that I am walking on them, and if I come across a bird on the wire and ‘step’ over it, if it flies while I step…it means I’ve fallen off.

So Doc, do you think I’ll play the violin again?

97

Holy shit this is spooky!

Lessee, I do the:

Teeth-tapping to the song thing, sometimes alternating thumbs too

I see the year as a big circle (more of a racetrack shape) in my head, and it you zoom out, it’s a bunch of circle that make up points in an infinite line, with a scale for judging time in years.

I also do the chewing-symmetry thing, especially when eating things like M&M’s, gummy bears, chips, etc. Not so much full meals.

Since I was an infant, I cannot fall asleep without something touching the top of my head. When I was newborn, my mom said she’d put me in the middle of the baby bed and I’d cry and wiggle until I got the headboard against my head, then go to sleep. To this day, if there’s no headboard, I automatically put my arm up there.

Here’s one I had hoped to see but haven’t

I have a secret language (well, I did until now). It’s nowhere near a total language, just a collection of a few phrases. They pop out mostly when I’m stressed some way. Or when I’m bored or walking long distances, I’ll mutter to myself (in my head, not out loud) in the language. There are several distinct phrases, but there’s also just a general “feel” it has, like when you can identify a foreign language from it’s sounds even when you don’t speak it. I think it’s a lot like Russian or maybe Klingon. The muttering sounds like speech, but isn’t, but then I already know what I’m saying anyway!

A few times I’ve accidently said some of the phrases out loud. Very hard to explain.

98

I type in my head a lot – what is being said or sung on the radio, listening to speeches or talks, or as a mental trick to stay alert while listening to someone who is boring me.

I’m also a clock number person – adding up numerals, making equations from the digits, and using any mathematical operations to make it true. I’ve always been grateful when the clock reads 9:1x, because the numbers all add up to the minutes past the hour.

In the car on a long trip, I obsessively calculate mileage and average speed in my head, with all sorts of permutations, including miles per dollar, dollar per mile, dollars per hour, gallons per hour, etc. Passing a road marker that gives mileage to a destination, I’ll estimate based on my current mileage the number of gallons I’ll burn, the amount of money it cost me to go that far, how much time it will take based on my current and trip-averaged speeds, plus the little mind game of “if I go five miles an hour faster/slower”, how those numbers will change.

Yeah, I’m a nerd. :slight_smile:

Blue skies…

99

I had no intention of posting, but this seems so fun…

I do the “explaining to time travelers”, too.

When I first learned to type, I would type everything I heard around me–the last sentence or phrase that was spoken, with my fingers on my lap, or desk, or whatever. I’ve gotten over it pretty much, after 30 years or so.

I am delighted when I see license plates that have letters and numbers in the same pattern–AAQ 774, for instance. Aha! It’s code! A = 7!

And I always have a song in my head. Currently it’s a Scott Joplin piano rag, whose name escapes me.

But you people with car runners–you’re just looney tunes. :slight_smile:

100

Damn you, I was hoping I could be the first to have this quirk! Only mine is more like I’m mowing the grass next to the road. I have to retract it back into the car every time a telephone pole, guard rail, or something else gets in the way.

I also click/grind/scrape my teeth to beats I make up. I’m quite good at it, and have many different types of clicks, grinds, and scraps. Such as both side whole tooth top bottom contact, or right side canine tip touch, etc…

I do a variation on the explaining thing. When I’m faced with a decision and I know the answer very well, I always have to explain it to this skeptical voice in my head about five times. It never happens to answers I’m only vaguly aware of the right answer to, only the ones I know 100%.