*I put things away one at a time. * Imagine getting all of the items out of the fridge to make a deli style sandwich. After I put the meat on the sandwich, I put it away. Then I put on the cheese and put it away, and so on. I don’t know why, but I just have to.
I often count my steps to ensure that each foot gets equal treatment. If I reach stairs, or a new room and the count is uneven, then I will purposely shorten my last step to make things fair. I know this makes my feet feel that I do not discriminate, but others that see me “quickstepping” just get creeped out when I tell them.
I’ll stop there for now. I would feel immensely grateful if any of you would be willing to post your strange behaviors, thereby making mine seem a little less abnormal.
I don’t imagine that this is very unusual, but when eating a single course meal (say, a sandwich with fries or fruit on the side) I always balance the meal so I end up with only a bite of each at the end. It kind of freaks me out when someone finishes up a sandwich and has a big pile of chips left over that they continue to eat. I want to go over, shake them, and yell at them, “Don’t you understand? You’re finished! You’re done eating! You can’t eat those potatoes by themselves! It’s wrong! Stop it!”
When sitting in any public place, I always try to sit facing the door, or at least not with my back to the door. Also, I like to leave by a different way than I’ve entered, if possible. Same for driving (take a different route going than coming.) I blame this on my grandfather, who had three rules:
[ol]
[li]Never sit with your back to the door.[/li][li]Never enter a room with only one exit.[/li][li]Never leave by the same way you entered.[/li][/ol]
Obviously, he was slightly paranoid, but he had his reasons.
I also have a compulsion to beat the crap out of anyone who answers their cell phone in a cinema or theatre, but I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that whatsovever.
I park my car at the end of the row and far from all the other cars (if I can help it) to avoid getting dings and scrapes. But it still happens. The fuckers are out to get me!
I have a preference to chew on the right side of my mouth. For instance, say I have a piece of chocolate. I’ll bite it in half and chew the first half on the left side of my mouth, so I can savor the other piece on the right. I have absolutely no idea why I do this.
Ah, but if it’s all on the same plate, it’s all part of one course, and if you don’t eat it together, you’ll confuse the help and they won’t know when you’re ready for the cold leak soup or the truffles with minted chocolate with cherries. Besides…ah, hell, it doesn’t really make any sense at all.
It’s just the way I am. :rolleyes:
For the record, unless there is some extra-ordinary breach of common manners or I’m at the receiving end of food-spray, I don’t correct someone else’s table manners (or anything else about their eating habits that bothers me.) That would be at least as rude as the original transgression.
I eat fast. I’ll finish a burger in the time it takes someone to unwrap theirs and get a mouthful in. Why do I do this? So I’m better able to talk. Yes people tell me to slow down. But if my stomach can handle it, why should I? Time is not to be wasted.
Toilet paper must be rolling over the top of the toilet paper roll. I know others suffer from this as well, but its true.
Other than those two, I can’t think of many compulsions I have.
I’m a compulsive doodler (get your mind out of the gutter!). I make little lists constantly, like what I’m going to do that day, etc. I am otherwise free of odd compulsions.
I count things. Especially my footsteps, and especially when going up or down stairs. I just can’t help myself. Because of this, I know that there are 15 steps from the first floor of my house to the second floor, and 11 steps down to the basement. 16 steps to my office (which is on the second floor of the building), and approximately 430 steps from my front door to the front door of my office. Oh, and there are 12 steps down to the basement of my girlfriend’s old house (which she just moved out of).
That’s the main one that I can think of. I mean, I like my eating experience to be varied, so I take alternating bites of things, but I don’t have to. And I like the toilet paper to be under the roll, but that’s a cat issue; I don’t think I’d care otherwise. And I have a preference to eat on the left side of my mouth. Chewing on the right just feels weird to me. I sometimes do that putting away food thing the OP mentioned, and on long car trips, I prefer to return another way than the way I got there, but that’s not always possible or a good idea.
So, yeah. A few compulsions. Not enough to qualify my for OCD, though. I don’t think.
I always have to put my right shoe on first. If I forget and start to put the left one on first I have to take it off and put the right one on first. It’s just the way it has to be.
I have to take a sip of whatever I’m drinking with a meal before I start eating. I can’t start eating unless I have a drink first.
For three years now my friend and I have had the same lunch period and she has brought the exact same lunch every single day. At the beginning of lunch she’ll peel off the crust on her sandwich, place it on the fruit cup, and begin eating. I’ve been watching her do this every day for the past three years and lunch just isn’t lunch until I watch this. I can’t even start eating until this happens. Thank og she isn’t sick a lot.
I do the list and doodling thing too. I also have a special pen here at the computer that I absolutely must be chewing on in order to think. I’ve tried thinking without it but it doesn’t work too well.
I do that, too. I don’t mean little doodles around the edges of notes; I’ll turn to a fresh page and start it in middle. During a 3-4 hour meeting (yes, sigh I did say 3-4 hours) I’ll go through a standard ball-point pen and 8-10 pages of a legal pad. These days it’s mostly paramecium-looking things surrounded by a gooey matrix, but in the past it was branched limbs or occasionally eyes. Oh, and sometimes I just solve random integrals, differential equations, or game theory problems. It’s really embarrassing on the rare occasion that I’m required to participate and I forget there’s a meeting going on. Hey, I’m doodling here…what do you want?
This classic seven-page thread “Odd Little Habits You Have” got me hooked to SDMB. Never before had I met so many shower-sitters, compulsive readers, everything on the side-eaters and heartwarmingly-no-odder-then-myself-people in one place.
Yeah, I know (although you can occasionally get real “chips” here as well) but I’ve always hated the term “French Fries”. It’s not the idiotic French/Freedom Fries thing–it just sounds harmonically discordant, and “fries” by themselves sounds…greasy. “Chips” is just more succinct, unostentatious, direct. And most people grasp what I mean, even if it is a bit off.
And nah, I ain’t no Limey. But between my precocious childhood reading, my baby sitter, and the fact that of the two and a half television stations we could get one was PBS with liberal showings of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, “Dr. Who”, and “Mystery”, I picked up the argot aptly, including an annoying tendency to pronounce “schedule” with a soft “ch”.
Better watch it, or I’ll start talking like Billy Bob Thornton in “Sling Blade”. “Ah recon ah’ll have a some of them french fried tators, mmm-huh.”
But between my precocious childhood reading, my baby sitter, and the fact that of the two and a half television stations we could get one was PBS with liberal showings of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, “Dr. Who”, and “Mystery”, I picked up the argot aptly, including an annoying tendency to pronounce “schedule” with a soft “ch”.