Your Odd Compulsions, Please.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I’m another candy sorter. I have to dump out the whole bag, and make sure there are equal numbers of each colour, then eat the remaining in a pattern, no eating the same colour twice in a row. Or, if I just take a handful, I have to put them in a colour pattern. Candy necklaces drive me bonkers. I have to make sure there are no two candies of the same colour next to each other, and then eat them an a way that no two of the same colour will end up next to each other.

If there’s a pattern on the flooring, I have to walk “with it”. I have to step in the same place of every repeated part, if that makes sense. And if I am walking on tile, there must always be the same number of tiles between each step.

I also must not step on the invisible “lines” created by the acritecture of a building. Just imagina that from every suuare corner, there is a line extended from the wall…I can’t step on it.

I’m also another clock chime counter, like Lyllyan. I also have to know what time it is, if I’m waiting for something or not. I wore my ugly velcro digital watch to my prom.

My favourite thing to do while watching some kind of competition is to “reduce” the score. If the score is 2 to 6, it’s 1 to 3 in my mind.

Is it obvious yet that I am a math geek?

I’m new. This is my first post. Hi.

42

Me too on all of the above, except that once I have the soft drink out of the freezer I don’t put it back. I do usually put it into a mug which has also been in the freezer.

Originally posted by Pyroette

Yep. I know exactly what you mean. Tiled floors get me in trouble, because I am always walking with my head down!

Originally posted by X-ray vision

I do something similar–I add up the digits just once, then check all the divisibility rules 1-10 excluding 7 which is a recursive rule. I often do this with someone’s address, and the worst part is I feel like I have to tell them if they have a Prime Number Address. I can’t begin to tell you the stares I have received upon delivery of that information!

For the record, I think all of these things are pretty darn cool!

43

That reminded me of something else I do. If I’m talking on the phone and there’s paper and a pen in front of me, I’ll start drawing triangles. Only when I’m on the phone, though, and only triangles. Dunno why.

44

I missed out on Hal Bristons M&M thread so here goes:

Like many of you, a candy sorter. I either eat all of one color (two at a time) or equalize the colors and keep them that way as I finish them. I take satisfaction watching the nonconforming pieces dissappear.

Candy, board game pieces, paper clips are subject to becoming organized into little symmetrical patterns on the table in front of me.

I like to pronounce words in public places backwards. I actually like it when I see a whole bunch of new business logos or signs because I get bored saying, “gnikraP oN” or “ylnO tixE.”

If I brush against something lightly, I have to touch that thing hard enough to scratch an itch on that spot. It’s NOT GOOD ENOUGH to scratch that body part with my hand. If my calf brushes a bench, I MUST press that same part of my calf against the same part of the bench or else it feels like I’m leaving an itch unscratched in my mind.

When disposing of a victim, there MUST be an equal number of parts in each bag.

I do that quantity surveying thing when working on repetitive tasks. Lifting weights, I’m thinking, “OK 1/6 done, 1/4 done, 1/2 done” etc… Reading a book, the first thing I do is look at the last page to see how long the book is. As I read, I track in my mind how much is left, trying to account for half pages, illustrations and such.

I’m always checking my keys and wallet when leaving a place.

I ususally eat my meals one thing at a time. But not always.

When eating cold cereal, I try to make sure that there is enough cereal to match the remaining milk. Likewise, if I’m eating two things that are “paired” like cheese and bread, I go to great lengths to make sure that there will be a proportionately equal share of each thing. I’ll cut both the bread and cheese in fourths and then halve each of those pieces. The fear is that I’ll run out of one before the other and be stuck with only bread or cheese for the last bite. Horrible.

I will disassemble candy bars if possible to eat just the chocalate coating before moving on to the nougat. If there is a mix, like chex mix, I eat the less-favored pretzels and peanuts first to get them out of the way before going to town on the remaining good stuff.

These are but a few of my fun quirks.

45

I get fixated on locating small objects. Recently it was flashlight. Previous episodes involved things like a pocketknife, a keychain, and a Glock magazine. Until I locate whatever the item may be, I can’t concentrate on anything else. I was up until the wee tiny hours of the morning 'til I found the guddam flashlight.

46

Me, I prefer the “one bag of arms, one bag of legs, one bag for the torso, head remaining on the mantle” method.

47

If I see a phone cord twisted up, I have to fix it. It drives me absolutely apeshit, and I can’t concentrate on anything else til it’s fixed.

48

I do something similar. If I brush my left leg up against a chair let’s say, then I must turn and brush my right leg against the chair in the same fashion. If I happen to brush the right leg with too much force, then I brush the left leg again, not with equal force, but with enough force so that the combined left-leg-brushes match the total force of the right leg brush.

Now do you see why I only started with two! I didn’t want to scare you people away.

49

I have two that come to mind:

  1. I cannot eat eggs without toast. I have to take my eggs and put in on a piece of toast, with ketchup, and make a mini sandwich. Dont even bother bringing me eggs without toast…I just cant eat them.

  2. I iron everything!! My jeans, t-shirts, undershirts, shorts…everything. Even if its perfectly fine, I still iron it. For some reason that doesnt apply to dry cleaned stuff, but everything else must be ironed before i wear it.

Well and I do sacrafice goats to the great underworld gods but thats more of a hobby than anything else :slight_smile:

50

Man, I can only imagine what kind of twitch-fest a doper get-together must be. If we have one in Florida, I’m bringing a five-pound bag of M&Ms and watching everyone go all OCD as they eat them.

51

Driving quirks:

–No braking on rumble strips. In my neck of the woods, some roads have rumble strips carved into the road at intervals before the stop sign. You cannot brake while driving over these. So it’s smoothly brake, release and glide over the rumble strip, brake again, release and glide over the next strip, and so on. I don’t know what happens if you’re braking while travelling over the rumble strip, but I’m sure it’s no good.

–You must site down rows when those rows run perpendicularly to the road. Since I live in farm country, sometimes this really sucks.

–When you go through a yellow light, tap the ceiling as many times as you can.

52

Have you ever had a waitress refuse to bring you toast?

:smiley:

Stranger

53

I don’t know why I started doing this, but every time I use an elevator, I need to turn around twice before getting off.

54

I have to “type out” words when I see them on signs or in public. For instance, coming to a stop sign means I’ll type out that word with my hands as they would properly appear on a keyboard. Anything goes, I’ll type out whole phrases, menu descriptions, you name it. It started in high school when I took typing, I wanted to learn the keyboard by heart so I would practice it everywhere. Now look where that got me ;o)

I also divide up my task by quantity fractions, especially workouts. On the treadmill I’ll see that I’ve been running for 15 minutes, so that means I’m halfway done. On a car trip to someplace like New Jersey, when I’ve been on the road for 1.5 hours I know I’m about a third of the way there.

55

Even if there are others with you? How do you explain it to them? Act like you’re checking out the elevator? “Man, this is one ritzy elevator! Let me take it all in again!”

56

I run my hand along the wall/railings when I’m indoors. When I was younger, I was concentrating so hard on that (or rather, I was spacing out) and managed to run headfirst into a fire extinguisher.
Yes, there was a THUNGGggg.

57

Oh man… here goes:

[ol]
[li]Before I go to bed at night it does not matter one iota where I am - a hotel, friends house, my parents, at home I have to check that the main door is locked. I do this three times - first time on route the bathroom to clean my teeth, second after I am done in the bathroom then I will go to where ever I am going to be sleeping and pull down the covers put the light on etc then I will go back and check the door again. Every night this happens.[/li][li]I will check my car is locked three times as well[/li][li]I eat all food in a specific order. Each meal I have I have set patterns on what order I will eat everything in. I love to try new food and will experiment with the order that I will eat things then continue that way for the rest of the meal.[/li][li]I will not step on cracks in the pavement. If it happens by mistake then which ever foot I did it with I will have to step on another crack with my other foot to “correct the balance”. I feel incomfortable until this is done.[/li][li]I write lists compulsively. Sometimes I cannot sleep until I have a list of things written down to do the next day.[/li][li]Everything on my desk has to be perfectly straight and in line with each other. I will straighten other peoples desks.[/li][li]I absolutely cannot sleep if my bedroom door is closed - it has to be at least open just a crack. I sleep very poorly in hotel rooms[/li][/ol]

Honestly when you meet me I appear normal.

58

**Winnie ** - I thought I was the only person in the world who does the “typing thing” !!! I’m so excited right now, it’s ridiculous.

I’m not sure why I started it, but I remember telling my aunt about it when she was trying to learn how to type and she looked at me like I was CRAZY.

My other compulsion is counting letters in a sentence or phrase that I say or hear (either in person or on tv or in a movie). I’m very happy when they add up to a number ending in 5 or 8,; but if they add up to 6, that especially bugs me, and I will often try to re-word the offending sentence so that the letters add up to a more pleasing number.

My name has 15 letters so that works out well for me. :smiley:

59

Ooops … forgot to mention I also HATE to have my food touching - especially when my corn gets underneath my mashed potatoes … yuck!!!

I MUST eat vegetables first - I know that comes from when I was a kid and I hated my vegetables and would leave them to the end of the meal and they tasted 100 times as bad once they were so cold. So I learned to get them over with and eat them when they’re hot.

Then I usually alternate between the rice or potatoes and the meat. Depends though, if my carbs are starting to get cold, I must eat them quickly, leaving my meat for last.

When walking my dog, I will check my (zippered) jacket pocket at least 10 times in 20 minutes to make sure I still have my housekeys. Why this is such a worry, I don’t know, since we keep spare keys outside just in case …

I MUST wet my toothbrush before I put toothpaste on it, or the toothpaste seems all gummy and dry and wrong.

There are a zillion other weird things I do, but I can’t think of many more right now.

60

I eat cereal vertically. As in, I start with a little section closest to me and eat only from there until no more cereal floats in the milk there. I like it when I can get half the bowl cereal free and the otehr half not eaten out of at all.

yeah.