The Lighter Side of Psych: What's Your Quirk?

A lot of the Psychtember posts so far have dealt with quite serious issues, so I wanted to add some lightness to try to balance that out!



This post is all about the quirks and idiosyncracies that everyone has. Let's face it, while the majority of people don't qualify as clinically neurotic, we all have those little things we like to do a particular way. I have a copy of Judy Reiser's Admit It, You're Crazy!, which is filled with anecdotes from many different people on their quirks in various aspects of life. Here are a few:

              In The Bathroom:

 "I will not sing in the shower before I eat breakfast because if you sing before breakfast, you cry before dinner. To get around this dilemma, sometimes before I go into the shower, I'll go in the kitchen and eat a couple crackers or a piece of fruit and then I can sing to my heart's content before I wash myself." – Relationship Manager, Advertising Software, Male, 41

"I have noticed that this behavior is common among men: When using the stall (not the urinal) in a public men's room, upon hearing someone else enter the room, most men let out an audible cough or some other noise. (I prefer to blow my nose.) I call it the Territorial Toilet Cough.

I asked my wife if women do the same thing. Her reply was to look at me like I was crazy (which I'll assume is a no).

I'm not a psychologist, but I think the reasoning behind it is that men prefer to do their bathroom thing as far away from other men as possible (e.g., the unwritten rule of never using a urinal next to one that is occupied unless it is the only one available). Making someone aware of your presence will ensure that they will use the appropriate (farthest) stall." – Director of Information Systems, Male, 33 (His wife: homemaker, 34)

In The Kitchen:

"When I eat my cereal in the morning, I have to eat it in such a way that I have equal amounts of milk and cereal on every spoonful and when I finish the last spoonful, there's no extra milk or flakes left in the bowl. I finish them simultaneously." – Artist, Female, 31

"If I dip my Oreos into milk, once the Oreos are gone I can't drink the milk with the floaties in it no matter how much milk is left." – Radio Host, Male, age unknown  

        At Night:

"When I go to bed, I don't take my watch off until I'm actually under the sheets. That is when I feel that time will stop and that is my relaxation period. Otherwise time is always going." – National Sales Manager, Newspaper Publisher, Male, 26

"Before I go to sleep I listen to the radio, but I can't turn it off in the middle of a song. I have to wait until it ends. If I'm a little slow and another song begins, I have to finish listening to that one." – Student, Female, 13

"If I'm reading a scary book before I go to bed, I have to move the book out of my bedroom into another room in the house before I can go to sleep. I'm afraid that the characters will come out and attack me in the middle of the night." – College student, Female, 21

In Fashion:

"My socks have to be smiling when I put them in the drawer. When you roll up socks and flip one opening over the other, the little shape that's formed at the end of the ball looks like a smile. It's cheerful to open my drawer and see all the socks smiling! I also arrange my socks from lightest on the left to darkest on the right." – Vice President, Institutional Textile Sales, Male, 43

"My fiance dates and numbers his pants. For example, he will write, "'05, pants #3," on the label inside the pants. When I first started seeing him, I thought that was so strange." – Radio Caller, Female, profession and age unknown

I must admit I have a few quirks like these. For instance, I don't mind eating cereal with milk, but once I'm done the cereal I hate drinking the leftover milk. (It doesn't taste like regular milk anymore, because it has this weird cereal flavour to it afterwards!)

And when I was really little, I hated it when there were any specks of lint or anything floating around in my bath water. I'd get my mom to remove them! Now I take showers, which handily takes care of that issue :D

So...what quirks do YOU have? Share them in the comments!

I leave you with a guessing game. This is part of another quote, but I've left out a couple of sentences referring to the subject matter. What do you think the speaker's discussing? Guess away! :D

"I choose one each night depending on my mood. I have the soft; the hard; the small; the big; the foreign ones; the domestic ones; different-colored ones, and I rotate among them. I use some frequently — two or three times a week — and others are used infrequently, every month or so. The soft ones are my favorite. The color doesn't matter as much; it's just for aesthetics."