I eat Quinoa basically every day at work, and I make it in my rice cooker each morning before work (that’s not the quirk).
The quirk is that I thank my rice cooker when the lever pops up, indicating its done. And it’s an emphatic “thank you.” No half-hearted thanks will do.
I realize it’s completely irrational, so I’ve started making the point by saying “thank you inanimate object, which has no ability to understand me.” But thank it, I do.
I visually superimpose things.
For example, if I am sitting at a stoplight and there is a spot on the windshield I will pick the most applicable eye and superimpose the spot on the light.
If there is a bug on the windshield and someone walking across a parking lot I will move my head around to visually superimpose the bug on the person’s head. Sometimes I will bob my head around and make the bug or spot hover around objects or people.
Other times, when just sitting around I will let my vision seperate and see which image is the most aestically pleasing. Lining up creases and lines and placing things in a nice visual arrangement. I really like it when books or boxes line up with their shadows and are parallel to the shelves or counter tops.
Oh yeah, and I like to crush people’s heads with my fingers, but that is a given.
Lessee…
When I eat Skittles, I separate the colors and eat them one color at a time. I don’t separate the whole bag in one go, though…I just separate them in handfuls as they come out. So sometimes I get a singleton, which is always eaten first. The only exception is for purple and red, because those taste yummy together.
When the dishwasher is emptied, the glasses go back in the cabinet in a certain order. (Older glasses in the back, newer but cheap glasses to the right, glasses with the cool etched patterns in front of the old ones, etc.)
A couple I’ve picked up since my daughter arrived nine months ago:
She has 9 bottles, which have 5 different designs/colors. When I make up the bottles and put them in the fridge, I put them in two rows of four with the extra in front. No bottle can be paired up with a matching pattern. And the screw-on caps, which are inter-changable but are colored to match the decorative pattern, must match the pattern. The green cap CANNOT be put on the bottle with the pink butterflies, or bad things will happen.
Same thing with her diapers. They all have Sesame Street characters on them, and I stack them on her changing table in two stacks. The same character cannot be on the top of both stacks at the same time. I deliberately mix up the order when I’m pulling them out of the package. I have no idea why.
Y’all are a bunch of freaks! 
I just fixed one of my compulsions recently. I had a motley assortment of plastic hangers, which had to be color-coordinated with the garments that were hung upon them. I went to The Evil Store (aka Bed, Bath, and Beyond) and bought all new BLACK heavyweight hangers so that it does not matter which hanger I grab when I’m hanging something up.
I feel so much better.
:eek: Me too! Except I NEVER eat different colors together, and I always eat the color with the least pieces first, then go in order upwards. It makes it difficult in a darkened movie theater, but there is usually enough light coming from the screen to get by…
My husband blindly pours out a handful and throws them all in his mouth at once. Heathen.
The color of a cup should coordinate with the liquid inside of it. I only noticed this quirk within the past five years. At my university, the dining halls had four different colors of cups. The blue ones were for milk or water. The brown ones were for black tea (hot or cold), coffee, or milk with cereal in it. The pink ones were for herbal teas. The green ones did not get used. I’ve observed similar patterns since the university dining hall.
Also, given relatively certain cups, I will drink hot liquids from them or eat my cereal from them. I don’t think that really counts though. The mugs for hot liquids were itty bitty and cereal works better from a cup. It’s super easy to drink the milk that way.
I have the restaurant seating compulsion thing. Comes from reading too many spy novels at an impressionable age, in my case. I am fixing it - I met someone else with the same compulsion and I can now sit with my back to the room if SHE has the good seat and can watch my back for me. :rolleyes: 
I hope that eventually I’ll be cured entirely. Otherwise I’ll just have to only dine with trustworthy companions.
The desk blotter at work must be kept perfectly straight at all times. The bottom edge must be parallel to the edge of the desk. It is a compulsion that cannot be ignored. The mouse pad also must conform to this standard. I am constantly straightening things. Similarly, I must park perfectly parallel within the lines.
I just realized that I don’t straighten constantly at home because my tables are round. No edges. That’s going to change next weekend when I get a square coffee table. :eek:
I also separate Skittles into color groups and generally eat the smallest group first. If not, then I eat the purple ones, then yellow, then green, then orange, and red last. Red is the best. I don’t do this with M&M’s though, probably because they all taste the same.
I’ve somewhat broken my need to sit with my back to a wall, but it doesn’t matter which side of the bed I sleep on as long as it’s closest to the door. I don’t sleep well otherwise.
I eat the thick chocolate ridges on the outside of Reese’s cups first, then eat the peanut butter disk.
I must have at least 3 different brands of shampoo in the shower at all times. I currently have 5.
I have that, plus a severe case of symmetry. Not only must edges line up, but everything has to be centered in its space, too. Sometimes exact symmetry isn’t possible, and in cases like that, I will just arbitrarily assign a new center and arrange things accordingly.
For example, I have a desk lamp on the hutch part of my computer desk and it is off to the far right, because that is the only place where it fits. Since I CAN’T center it on the hutch itself, I have it centered in its third of the space. The remaining two-thirds of the hutch top hold a collection of goblets, which are of course centered in their allotted space.
You should see me in my family room after doing the floors, as I try to line up my sofa with the window, the coffee table and the entertainment center using the long sides of the rug, and then the fireplace, coffee table and the easy chair using the short sides of the rug.
I don’t have any weird OCD-like quirks like the rest of you freaks (:D), but I do a few things that I don’t think many other people do. (In fact, I’ve been thinking about starting a thread just like this! So thanks, StarvingButStrong!)
I don’t use shaving cream. I have a full beard, but I (usually) trim a neat line on my cheeks and my neck. But I just use a disposable twin-blade razor, dry, with no shaving cream or soap or water. It helps that my beard hair is neither thick nor dense. I haven’t bought shaving cream in more than a decade.
I usually only take a shower every other day, unless I did something really sweaty and smelly the day before. It may help that I live alone and work for myself. (Or maybe it explains it!)
I count stairs. If it’s a short flight, I’ll try to count before I start climbing - if not, I start going and hope for the best. This is so that I can start with the correct foot, allowing me to take the last step with my right foot, and take my first step on level ground with my left foot. If I know how many stairs are in a flight that I’ve seen before, I start with the correct foot - if I get to the end and I’ve started with the wrong foot (or if I just start wrong anyway), I’ll skip a step to correct myself.
I do the straightening thing, the counting-stairs thing, and the clothing-color-matches-the-hanger thing. I, too, thank inanimate objects. (Note: Atomicktom: Your quinoa tastes better and is actually more nourishing that way. I really believe this. See Masaru Emoto.)
When I was little, I could not eat M&Ms in a theater until I knew what color they were. Most theaters are pretty dark, and I had to get over it.
When I ride my bike, I have to add up license plates. Thankfully, not all of them. Usually commercial ones that are mostly numbers. Also, I see a surprising number of plates that have both a double digit and a double letter. (i.e., “5 QQA 717”) I see so many on an average day that one time I had the idea to work out a system where each possible combination of double letter/number would represent a different color. I would then take down the combinations I saw each day, and enter the resulting colors into sequential squares on some grid paper. I actually took down the combos for awhile, but I could never work out the corresponding color part. There just weren’t enough colors. (if any mathmo Doper can figure out a system for this, let me know. 
)
I just was curious to see what it would look like.
There’s more, but I think I see some townspeople coming (or are they village folk?) with pitchforks & torches.
I have to eat the edge of food first, going all around the edge, before eating the middle. Sandwiches, burgers, etc. If I’m eating pie or pizza, I eat the crust first.
I make my bartender(s) serve me a bottle of beer in a frosty glass in the summer, but drink straight out of the bottle in the winter. It makes some awkward moments in spring and fall when they just don’t know what I require. Maybe it is more of a control thing than a quirk. Somehow I feel it keeps them on their toes.
Yeah, I don’t have any of the OCD quirks quite a few of you do.
Since I’m naturally left-handed and forced by circumstances to have some degree of ambidexterity, I do do things that make onlookers raise eyebrows sometimes. I write with my left hand and use chopsticks with my right. I shave and brush my teeth with either hand. If I need to use something, I’ll grab it with whatever hand is closest and if I need it on the other side, or if it’s a “handed” version like scissors, I’ll toss it to the other hand.
I actually do little tosses from hand to hand like that quite often, which is probably something I got from learning how to juggle as well as the handedness thing. A tick I probably got from martial arts is testing the balance of silverware when I pick it up. People have pointed out that I flip knives from forehand to reversed and back when I’m not really paying attention, like some people spin their pens when they’re writing.
Even though I sucked as an amateur magician since I have short stubby fingers, I often palm or conceal coins. Pointless practice since I never exhibit the skills due to general ineptitude, but I still do it as a tick.
The seating position thing I got from growing up in a city with pretty high violent crime, reinforced by spy novels, but the real life thing came first. Same with finding exits to a room or building, paying attention to surroundings and people while walking, not walking close to buildings or blind corners, and having my hands free if at all possible. Like Gukumatz, I thought it was pretty natural behavior when I was younger. It wasn’t until moving away that I realized that not everyone thinks like that.
I am interested in neurolinguistic programming. (NLP).
Some of it is total bunk, but the basic idea of playing upon habitual behavoir of human beings as a way of controlling their behavoir is interesting.
my “internal scientist” mjore or less casts it off as unmesurable data yielding irrelevant results…
but still
(and here my 'quirk" comes in)
derailing bullies and bully behavoir with a few well placed comments/body language and gestures
“ensuring” my order for a particular type of food, service, product arrives when expected, to spec, on time… (NLP lets you push monkeys around… with out them knowing)
Encouraging real and unbiased communication in my workplace (by using NLP to disolve social/professional hierachies)
I am assuming thatr you define “Quirk” as something I enjoy doing, is unique and doesn’t fit in to the current social model
FML
Yeah, I used to think NLP was crap as well (and I suppose a lot of it is) but it still impresses me in restaurants, when I need a refill or to ask a question, if I rub my neck the wait staff shows up post haste. I get a quick soda and a quick neck massage as a bonus.
Don’t tell anyone though, I can imagine sitting in Chili’s surrounded by waggling elbows and frustraited waitresses trying to figure out who is the most pissed off.
I had loads of quirks when I was younger, but I “outgrew” them. If I was listening to the radio I had to wait till their was a silence before I’d switch the radio off, cos I didn’t want to cut the DJ/song off mid sentence
I always had to have my bed against the wall opposite the door, so that I could lay on my right side facing the door. I used to part-share a flat with a pal, and every time I went around there I’d have to rearrange the furniture in the bedroom to suit (why she kept moving it all back when I left was never resolved)
I’d empty tubes of Smarties out and line them up by colour, then I’d make a triangle out of them, then eat any “leftovers” then eat one from each row until they were all gone …
I think there must be something wrong with me if this is the best I can manage …
I arrange the banknotes in my wallet - they have to be the right way up, facing the same way and in descending order (i.e. highest denominations at the back). If I am feeling particularly odd, I’ll arrange them in serial number order as well.
Hear, hear. 
Do non-quirks count?
I don’t
*of course I pay someone to do this stuff - -let’s keep it hygenic 