things about me that you may not know or that i think most other people don't do
This is supposed to be "25 things" but I'm just going to go until I'm done. I'm seriously hoping I get some comments of "I do that too!" or I'm going to feel even weirder. Yes, some of it is going to be TMI.
1: In my adult life, I never, ever cry, and it has nothing to do with being "manly". There have been plenty of times when I've wanted to, even tried to, and I can't. It bothers me.
2: I like to imagine that people I know are telepathically linked with me one-way and can see through my eyes and see what I'm doing. I imagine whether they would approve and think things at them.
3: I chew on things all the time. EXCEPT for writing utensils and straws. People that chew on those things annoy me. One of the most common things you will find me chewing on is the little piece of blue plastic inside the top of a 20 oz. soda bottle.
4: If I am going up or down stairs I will skip a stair to ensure that I land on my right foot at the top or bottom. I memorize how many stairs are in staircases that I go up or down frequently so I can do this more easily and look less awkward. I also have to have a step rhythm based on physical features of what I'm walking on (sidewalk cracks, colored tiles, etc). Depending on how wide the feature in question is, I will have a rhythm of two steps per sidewalk square or maybe a polyrhythm of three steps per two sidewalk squares. (yes, it's musical somehow.) It's difficult to make this look natural and sometimes I end up kind of shuffling every few steps.
5: Whenever I am in the presence of a woman that I think is attractive, I automatically assume that whatever I say or do is being interpreted as awkward. It makes me very nervous and tends to fulfill itself.
6: I love children. Getting to play with a small child can make my whole week. I don't understand my friends that don't want children.
7: Elevators terrify me. I can use them, but the entire time I am in one I will be imagining the cable snapping and plummeting to my death. Escalators bother me too, I always have to take a big step over the end to avoid being sucked under and mangled. Apparently this fear isn't entirely unfounded: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/03/02/man_is_strangled_after_clothing_snags_in_mbta_escalator/
8: The high-pitched whine of a CRT sets me on edge. I wonder if everyone can hear that. When I walk into a house, I immediately know if there is a TV on anywhere in it, even if the volume is all the way down.
9: When I was younger, I used to silently mouth the last part of any sentence I had just said. It was sort of like silently repeating myself. I had no idea that I did it until people started pointing it out to me, and after that it was embarrassing. (P.S. Do I still do this?)
10: Whenever I watch a romantic comedy with a happy ending, I am left with an intense feeling of bitterness because things don't work that way for me.
11: Whenever I'm around a person a lot, I will pick up their speech patterns and even their laugh.
12: When I see people I know but am not good friends with in a public place, I will deliberately avoid them unless they approach me.
13: I hear a rhythm in everything. Speech, ambient noises, everything. I really like real-life ambient sounds, but not so much ambient music.
14: I can't fall asleep without background noise. And it has to be noise, not music. TV shows work. Strangely, this is pretty much the only time I "watch" TV.
15: When I eat colored candy (such as Starburst) I will separate them into colors, remove and eat extras so that they all have the same number remaining, and then eat them in order of preference, one at a time. Yellow, pink, orange, red, repeat.
16: I reread EVERYTHING I type before I send it, just to make sure that I really want to say that. I submit probably only about 20% of the LJ comments or IMs that I type. I turn off the ability for other people to see that I'm typing because of this, and because I notice that when I'm typing other people will stop and wait for me to finish, and that annoys me because I don't want my message to change what they were going to say or make them not say it. This ability makes me prefer text media to vocal conversation, because it's like being able to take something back after realizing that it wouldn't be interpreted well.
17: I have to be naked in order to poop, even in public restrooms.
18: If I go without sex for a while, sex starts to scare me. I won't want to have sex anymore because I worry that I won't be good at it or that whoever the next person is will be disgusted when they see me naked. This is the case now. I'd love to have a relationship, but even if I were in one I don't think I'd want to have sex.
19: Some of my older friends know that I used to be really bad about interrupting people. I think I developed this habit from being around my mother, because that's the only way anyone else can get a word in around her. Now whenever I'm around a lot of people, I just don't say anything most of the time in order to avoid interrupting someone. I have plenty to say going through my mind, I just don't say it because I never feel like it's my turn to speak.
19a: In some cases, 19 is probably a good thing, because whenever I'm in the presence of someone I should respect, the worst thing I could possibly say in that situation is playing in my mind and I have a serious desire to say it. For example, if I'm having dinner with a girlfriend's parents, I'll want to say something like, "I fucked your daughter last night. In your house. In the ass."
20: Everything people say reminds me of a song. Sometimes I'll start singing the lyric in question right then and there.
21: I say "ow" when I drop something, as if I could feel its pain. I don't know why.
22: I won't eat the end of a hot dog or banana. Something about the way they look just weirds me out. I call it the anus.
23: Whenever I'm doing something that makes both of my hands unavailable, such as carrying something heavy or playing a game that requires split second timing, it is almost inevitable that somewhere on my body will begin to itch horribly. Sometimes this also happens when I am doing something I don't want to do. When I was a kid, my chores included vacuuming, and whenever I tried to vacuum my entire body would itch until I was on the floor scratching everywhere.
24: When I replay conversations I have had with people in my mind and think of the witty retort days later (as I think most people do) I will actually say it out loud, MAYBE under my breath. Even if I don't say anything out loud, I'll do facial expressions and gestures. It gets me strange looks and what-the-hell reactions sometimes. I also laugh out loud out of nowhere when I'm replaying amusing things in my head. People probably think I'm schizophrenic. I also mentally rehearse for upcoming conversations, including forming eloquent responses to questions I expect to be asked, so I'm caught off guard when the conversation doesn't go the way I thought it would.
25: I hate it when other people ride in my car because then I can't sing along to my music without feeling embarrassed.
26: If I'm really intently focused on something, it is literally to the exclusion of all other stimuli. I will have no idea what is going on around me.
27: I like the volume of things which are on large scales (like my car stereo, which goes at least to 30 and I'm not sure how much higher because I don't want to damage anything) to be a multiple of 5. I would even demand it of Mark when I was in his car, and he would put it on something like 12 or 17 just to annoy me.
28: I have musical ADD in the car. I can't listen to an entire song. Once all of the verses and/or the solo and bridge are over I will skip to the next song without listening to another minute or two of the chorus being repeated.
29: I hate my teeth, so I taught myself to smile without opening my lips.
30: I count how long I pee and feel proud if it's over 20 seconds.
31: Sometimes when I'm walking around I unfocus my eyes on purpose and see if I can still get around or recognize people.
32: When I'm driving and there is a cliff to the side of the road I am always tempted to drive off of it. Not because I want to die, but because I want to catch some air to see what it feels like. This always made the drive between Nashville and Knoxville difficult.
33: Whenever I walk through a store's inventory control system, I expect it to go off and I tense up, even though I didn't steal anything.
34: I type faster and more accurately when I'm angry.
35: I like to speak in five-seven-five haiku. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes I don't point it out and see who gets it. I've even ordered food this way, to the amusement of the other people at the table.
36: Whenever I'm listening to rock music, I imagine myself performing it for a wildly cheering crowd.
37: I used to have an excellent memory for numbers, such that I still remember my seventh grade locker combination and every phone number I knew when I was little, but it's evidently tied to the physical act of dialing them because ever since I started storing numbers in my phone I can't remember them.
38: The aforementioned internal mono/dialogue is also going on during real life conversations. I have several thoughtstreams going on at any given time. Sometimes when I'm having a conversation with someone I'll bring up a topic that my mental dialogue had arrived at normally, but which is a total non sequitur in real life--another situation that always gets me a "huh?" Then I have to retrace that train of thought and explain it.
...I think I'm done.
1: In my adult life, I never, ever cry, and it has nothing to do with being "manly". There have been plenty of times when I've wanted to, even tried to, and I can't. It bothers me.
2: I like to imagine that people I know are telepathically linked with me one-way and can see through my eyes and see what I'm doing. I imagine whether they would approve and think things at them.
3: I chew on things all the time. EXCEPT for writing utensils and straws. People that chew on those things annoy me. One of the most common things you will find me chewing on is the little piece of blue plastic inside the top of a 20 oz. soda bottle.
4: If I am going up or down stairs I will skip a stair to ensure that I land on my right foot at the top or bottom. I memorize how many stairs are in staircases that I go up or down frequently so I can do this more easily and look less awkward. I also have to have a step rhythm based on physical features of what I'm walking on (sidewalk cracks, colored tiles, etc). Depending on how wide the feature in question is, I will have a rhythm of two steps per sidewalk square or maybe a polyrhythm of three steps per two sidewalk squares. (yes, it's musical somehow.) It's difficult to make this look natural and sometimes I end up kind of shuffling every few steps.
5: Whenever I am in the presence of a woman that I think is attractive, I automatically assume that whatever I say or do is being interpreted as awkward. It makes me very nervous and tends to fulfill itself.
6: I love children. Getting to play with a small child can make my whole week. I don't understand my friends that don't want children.
7: Elevators terrify me. I can use them, but the entire time I am in one I will be imagining the cable snapping and plummeting to my death. Escalators bother me too, I always have to take a big step over the end to avoid being sucked under and mangled. Apparently this fear isn't entirely unfounded: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/03/02/man_is_strangled_after_clothing_snags_in_mbta_escalator/
8: The high-pitched whine of a CRT sets me on edge. I wonder if everyone can hear that. When I walk into a house, I immediately know if there is a TV on anywhere in it, even if the volume is all the way down.
9: When I was younger, I used to silently mouth the last part of any sentence I had just said. It was sort of like silently repeating myself. I had no idea that I did it until people started pointing it out to me, and after that it was embarrassing. (P.S. Do I still do this?)
10: Whenever I watch a romantic comedy with a happy ending, I am left with an intense feeling of bitterness because things don't work that way for me.
11: Whenever I'm around a person a lot, I will pick up their speech patterns and even their laugh.
12: When I see people I know but am not good friends with in a public place, I will deliberately avoid them unless they approach me.
13: I hear a rhythm in everything. Speech, ambient noises, everything. I really like real-life ambient sounds, but not so much ambient music.
14: I can't fall asleep without background noise. And it has to be noise, not music. TV shows work. Strangely, this is pretty much the only time I "watch" TV.
15: When I eat colored candy (such as Starburst) I will separate them into colors, remove and eat extras so that they all have the same number remaining, and then eat them in order of preference, one at a time. Yellow, pink, orange, red, repeat.
16: I reread EVERYTHING I type before I send it, just to make sure that I really want to say that. I submit probably only about 20% of the LJ comments or IMs that I type. I turn off the ability for other people to see that I'm typing because of this, and because I notice that when I'm typing other people will stop and wait for me to finish, and that annoys me because I don't want my message to change what they were going to say or make them not say it. This ability makes me prefer text media to vocal conversation, because it's like being able to take something back after realizing that it wouldn't be interpreted well.
17: I have to be naked in order to poop, even in public restrooms.
18: If I go without sex for a while, sex starts to scare me. I won't want to have sex anymore because I worry that I won't be good at it or that whoever the next person is will be disgusted when they see me naked. This is the case now. I'd love to have a relationship, but even if I were in one I don't think I'd want to have sex.
19: Some of my older friends know that I used to be really bad about interrupting people. I think I developed this habit from being around my mother, because that's the only way anyone else can get a word in around her. Now whenever I'm around a lot of people, I just don't say anything most of the time in order to avoid interrupting someone. I have plenty to say going through my mind, I just don't say it because I never feel like it's my turn to speak.
19a: In some cases, 19 is probably a good thing, because whenever I'm in the presence of someone I should respect, the worst thing I could possibly say in that situation is playing in my mind and I have a serious desire to say it. For example, if I'm having dinner with a girlfriend's parents, I'll want to say something like, "I fucked your daughter last night. In your house. In the ass."
20: Everything people say reminds me of a song. Sometimes I'll start singing the lyric in question right then and there.
21: I say "ow" when I drop something, as if I could feel its pain. I don't know why.
22: I won't eat the end of a hot dog or banana. Something about the way they look just weirds me out. I call it the anus.
23: Whenever I'm doing something that makes both of my hands unavailable, such as carrying something heavy or playing a game that requires split second timing, it is almost inevitable that somewhere on my body will begin to itch horribly. Sometimes this also happens when I am doing something I don't want to do. When I was a kid, my chores included vacuuming, and whenever I tried to vacuum my entire body would itch until I was on the floor scratching everywhere.
24: When I replay conversations I have had with people in my mind and think of the witty retort days later (as I think most people do) I will actually say it out loud, MAYBE under my breath. Even if I don't say anything out loud, I'll do facial expressions and gestures. It gets me strange looks and what-the-hell reactions sometimes. I also laugh out loud out of nowhere when I'm replaying amusing things in my head. People probably think I'm schizophrenic. I also mentally rehearse for upcoming conversations, including forming eloquent responses to questions I expect to be asked, so I'm caught off guard when the conversation doesn't go the way I thought it would.
25: I hate it when other people ride in my car because then I can't sing along to my music without feeling embarrassed.
26: If I'm really intently focused on something, it is literally to the exclusion of all other stimuli. I will have no idea what is going on around me.
27: I like the volume of things which are on large scales (like my car stereo, which goes at least to 30 and I'm not sure how much higher because I don't want to damage anything) to be a multiple of 5. I would even demand it of Mark when I was in his car, and he would put it on something like 12 or 17 just to annoy me.
28: I have musical ADD in the car. I can't listen to an entire song. Once all of the verses and/or the solo and bridge are over I will skip to the next song without listening to another minute or two of the chorus being repeated.
29: I hate my teeth, so I taught myself to smile without opening my lips.
30: I count how long I pee and feel proud if it's over 20 seconds.
31: Sometimes when I'm walking around I unfocus my eyes on purpose and see if I can still get around or recognize people.
32: When I'm driving and there is a cliff to the side of the road I am always tempted to drive off of it. Not because I want to die, but because I want to catch some air to see what it feels like. This always made the drive between Nashville and Knoxville difficult.
33: Whenever I walk through a store's inventory control system, I expect it to go off and I tense up, even though I didn't steal anything.
34: I type faster and more accurately when I'm angry.
35: I like to speak in five-seven-five haiku. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes I don't point it out and see who gets it. I've even ordered food this way, to the amusement of the other people at the table.
36: Whenever I'm listening to rock music, I imagine myself performing it for a wildly cheering crowd.
37: I used to have an excellent memory for numbers, such that I still remember my seventh grade locker combination and every phone number I knew when I was little, but it's evidently tied to the physical act of dialing them because ever since I started storing numbers in my phone I can't remember them.
38: The aforementioned internal mono/dialogue is also going on during real life conversations. I have several thoughtstreams going on at any given time. Sometimes when I'm having a conversation with someone I'll bring up a topic that my mental dialogue had arrived at normally, but which is a total non sequitur in real life--another situation that always gets me a "huh?" Then I have to retrace that train of thought and explain it.
...I think I'm done.