Habits

Okay, so I’ve been tagged by Autumn Verses to take part in this blog game and, always willing for a shilling, I’m taking part but I don’t know five other people with blogs so am sending it on to five of my OU pals to play by email – Mark B, Barbara, Eve, Karen and Helen.

The rules: The 1st player of this ‘game’ starts with the topic "5 weird habits of yourself" and people who get tagged need to write a blog entry (or email in my case) about their 5 weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next 5 people to be tagged and list their names.

Here's my weird five:

1. Repressing ridiculous anti-social urges. This one has always worried me because I’ve mentioned it to a number of people over the years as something that I believe everyone does, and they’ve all looked at me in a very strange way before patting my arm and moving to a safe distance. As an example of what I mean – I’m sat in a very quiet place, maybe a library or on a bus – and I notice something that annoys / intrigues / amuses me and begin to dwell on it. I’ll focus on it to the point where I want to do something (often to shout out something inappropriate) so badly that it takes all my self-control to stop myself from doing it. Now, what you have to understand is that whilst I am considering doing it and stopping myself from doing it, I know it is highly inappropriate / ridiculous / anti-social and find the idea of doing it just for these reasons alone, hilarious. I’ve never lost my self-control yet but I’m expecting to have a very colourful dotage.


2. Making a low grunting noise in my throat. I don’t do this one anymore – used to do it incessantly as a child – usually whilst the family was gathered together watching TV in the evenings (I seem to remember doing it a lot during ‘The News’ so guess it was an attention seeking thing). It used to drive my mother to distraction but I couldn’t stop it.


3. Making up rules and scenarios. This is one I still do and it has infinite variations. It can be rules or scenarios about anything in any situation – in its most simplistic form it’s not walking on the cracks on the pavement. The most interesting one though is the scenarios one – I like to model relations between things in my head by using numbers or words – a kind of ‘six degrees of separation’ thing. I’m not sure I can explain it any better than that – it’s just how my head works and I don’t consciously intend to do it, just find myself doing it. I used to think it was to help me remember things since I often do it with dates (for example – 1066 was the year of the Battle of Hastings and that adds up to 13, which adds up to 4, which came from 2 numbers added together and 2 4s are 8…) but it doesn’t help me remember anything – it is totally pointless and just, well, weird.


4. I can’t sit in a chair without complicating it. I seem to be incapable of just sitting in a chair straight without crossing my legs, sitting on one leg, leaning one way or another or sitting sideways. Can’t keep still for long either (because the ways I sit are all so uncomfortable after a few minutes…).


5. My life has a soundtrack. This one really annoys me. Snatches of phrases and lines from music, films, poetry, anything, often pop into my head according to situations or circumstances I’m in and it is often the cheesier stuff like Julie Andrews numbers or silly phrases from Star Trek. This usually happens when I’m bored – often in business meetings. Although it can be amusing at times, it is also rather distracting.

So that’s it, I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone else has to say – maybe they will each of them let me post their responses to my blog…?