Things that you do to make yourself feel unique.

I suppose the best way to start this thread is to explain how the idea to do something like this was presented to me. I had a creative writing teacher once who asked the class if anyone had any especially weird habits, or felt compelled to do bizare things. An example he gave was of someone he once knew who absolutely loved to steal fake ice cubes out of glasses at home decorating stores. When no one in the class admitted to doing something similar, he told us to try developing such a trait in order to inspire us to write, just be unique, or whatever. This wasn’t a class project so we weren’t forced to try it but I always thought the notion was kind of cool.

Fast forward a little while, and I happened to see a picture of a dollar bill with a death threat written on it online. I decided that money would be my medium for my weird habit.

On Saturday mornings, I take all the cash out of my wallet and write little phrases on every bill. These phrases are normally lyrics or obscure things that for whatever reason I think sound cool to me when said aloud. Sometimes I write confessions, or just my feelings; these are always written in cursive. Other times I make up an acronym for the bill, or just an acronym for the word “money.” I always sign my bills with a strange little symbol that I made up in highschool after I’m finished.

For some reason, this little hobby seems to enhance my life. I like to imagine what people think of the person who wrote the message when they get handed one of my dollars. I vaguely like the suspense I feel when I had a cashier one of these bills (that is, I don’t want to be “outed” by someone, as part of the joy in this is that it’s anonymous). I like feeling as though I’m unique because I have a ritual that very few others seem to have. I also hope that one day, I’ll get one of my dollars back through random chance and remember how I felt the Saturday morning that I wrote it.

Anyway, does anyone else do anything similar?

When I was in high school I used to steal the fork every day after I finished my lunch in the cafeteria. After 4 years, I had a box full of several hundred forks in my bedroom closet. I have no idea why I did this, and I eventually threw most of them away, although I do still have a couple in my kitchen drawer to this day.

I’m not sure whether this qualifies, but I also download lots of music from the internet and I’m constantly searching for new music to listen to. I still use old fashioned CDs and I usually burn at least one new CD every month that contains new songs I like, or at least songs that are new to me. Instead of labeling the CDs with the names of the songs, I label each one only with the month and the year that I burned the CD. Now I have close to a hundred of these CDs so if I’m in a November 1999 mood, I will simply put that CD in my player and it will instantly take me back to that month. Of course I generally don’t have the benefit of knowing which songs are on which disc before I listen to it, but I like surprises.