Earlier today, I was pulling some weeds. I went into the garage first, picking up my gardening gloves…and dropping them to the ground, stepping on them thoroughly before putting them on.
It occurred to me, that anyone looking on might wonder why I was doing this? Pick up gloves, drop them, stomp on them, and then pick them up again. Weird, right?
The answer is perfectly clear, to me anyway. I live in Australia, and there’s a non-zero chance that some member of our horrendously venomous species may have taken residence in said gloves. Likely, no, but why take that chance?
So, what do y’all do that would seem odd to a casual onlooker, but makes perfect sense to you?
When I drive somewhere, when I get there, I always pick up all the things I’m taking with me before I open the door; I don’t get out and reach back in for things. Two reasons:
I live in Minnesota, land of driving rain/wind/snow. If I stand there with the door open and fish around inside for my stuff, things can get awkward.
I used to drive a van with a towing package, so it was a little higher than usual, and I couldn’t reach the floor between the seats from outside the van, so I literally had to take everything with me in one shot, and I just got used to it.
At the moment, I’m wearing reading glasses that has the lens completely removed from one side. I only need one contact lens and did not put it in today. Makes me look a bit deranged. Perhaps I should just pull the plug and get a monocle and let folks know for sure.
(The glove stomping sounds like a dam good idea by the way, I crush mothballs and spread them on the entrance to our shed where we keep the trash. Seems to help keep bears away).
Not unlike the OP, but with much less venomous arachnids, I always slap the snot out of something solid with whatever pair of gardening gloves I pick up before donning them, and for the same reasons. People think I’m challenging the wall to a duel or something.
LOL, as soon as I read your first line, I knew exactly why you did it – even without knowing you are a resident of Australia! I do the very same thing for any gloves I leave in my workshop/green house/barn, even though I don’t have quite the stunning array of venomous species that you do. I also check my work boots every morning by jamming my gloved hands into them before I stick my feet in there.
As for other things I do that seem odd to a casual onlooker, I can think of one the squicks people out and I don’t even think about it anymore.
I have a truly special and much beloved mini-Dachshund. He has been my most faithful companion over these many years since my husband died. He is almost no trouble, is extremely obedient, doesn’t chew, doesn’t snap, doesn’t bark excessively, loves people. I love him to pieces. But he has one bad incurable habit. He licks my feet compulsively.
I spent 6 years trying to break the habit. I couldn’t. So I finally caved and now just let him do it. I’m used to it, but sometimes guests are unnerved. Oh, well. If they let him, he’ll lick their feet, too. I know it’s gross. I just don’t any longer care.
When I get out of the car to get my mail out of my rural mail box I bend all the way over and crane my head to look underneath. From about 5 or 6 feet away. It looks stupid. But once there was a rattlesnake climbing up the pole. About gave me a heart attack. So now I look. Every time. My only salvation, there’s rarely any traffic to see my genuflecting of the mail box king.
My dad, a farmer, wore gloves in winter that were bright orange and fuzzy when new. One day when I was visiting, he pulled on a brand new pair, got out his cigarette lighter, and set first one, then the other glove on fire. The fuzz burned off pretty fast, and he slapped out the flames. I’m sure I was looking at him oddly. He explained that he would be lighting a cigarette from time to time, and eventually a glove would catch fire unexpectedly. To avoid being startled or burned, he just got it over with right away. Made sense, I guess.
Piper Dad and I once used the long hose of our central vac to vacuum our front lawn.
Neighbours saw it and thought we were crazy.
The answer was more mundane. Piper Dad had spilled a bag of fertiliser and we didn’t want chemical burn killing the lawn. Once we picked up all we could with shovels and a broom, we brought out the central vac to get the last bits.
I used my shop vac on my lawn several years ago. The wind had flipped my deck’s dining table over, and the tempered glass top had broken in thousands of tiny little bits. That was the only thing I could think of to get them all.
I think I probably have a lot of these, but I don’t really recognize them anymore. Last night my brother came over to the house and as he was leaving, I had to pick up the door knob and attach it to the door to let him out. I explained that if we left the knob on the door, one of the dogs could open it. He said, “Y’all have weird lives.”
I have a habit of sometimes rubbing my face with a lock of my hair. As a teenager, I had really bad skin, and one of the rules which was drilled into my head was, “Never touch your face”. If my nose itches or something, I use my hair to rub it, under the theory that my hair is probably cleaner than my hands. I think this habit may be one reason I rarely get sick.
Whenever I use my stick blender, I always check the blades. I also always put it away clean, and live alone.
I do this after the time in my old place when I just happened to glance at the blades before putting the blender in my chunky vegetable soup and saw a large slug which had somehow slimed its way into the house and taken up residence behind the blender blades.
I just turn my gloves inside out, I like spiders (and before you say, yes I have been to Australia), and I don’t want to wear squished ones either.
If I’m holding something (usually a coffee cup) in my right hand and come to a door that pushes open, I use my left elbow to push it open. I have since my left arm was in a cast and after the cast came off, useless for about a year.
I hang out on the floor of my bathroom. I like to leave the thermostat a little cooler than what I’m comfortable with while I’m at work all day, to save money. So when I come home I’m always cold, and the quickest way to warm up is to go in the bathroom and turn on the space heater (since the bathroom is the smallest room, the space heats up faster). It also has a comfort factor to it, because when I was growing up my parents kept the house cold so sometimes I would go into the bathroom and turn on the space heater just to read a book somewhere where it was warmer, so the action has a nostalgia factor to it as well.
In the fall, spiders tend to make large 2 or 3 foot in diameter webs in my front yard on a daily basis. After walking into them many times, I started looking for sticks that had fallen from a nearby tree and use them to swat down the webs. It occurred to be that I probably look nuts to others since the web are nearly invisible, but I didn’t look particularity sane when I would accidentally walk into a web and try to get it off me either.
I feel bad about ruining the spiders hard work, but often times the webs are anchored to the side mirror of my car so it would be ruined when I drive away anyway.
Years ago a friend shared a story about his little girl finding a mouse in her winter boot the first time she wore them for the season. And by “found it” I mean, said, “Daddy, there’s something in my boot” when she was strapped into her car seat. When they got to daycare he took her boot off and…MOUSE!!
I’m forever traumatized, and always, always shake my boots out before wearing them.
