After reading through most of this thread, I've come up with quite a long list of weird shit that I used to do. A lot of the habits posted have spurred up memories of things I've done. I don't do most of these things anymore, but I did them as a kid.
-Like some of you guys, I used to have an obsession with balance. This would cause me to do many weird things, but the weirdest had to do with my fear of being blind. I would fear not only going blind, but blind in just one eye, so I would constantly blink with just one eye one at a time to make sure that I hadn't. But then I started to become obsessed with balancing things out. So, if I blinked with my right eye, I'd have to then blink with my left eye. But then I would think that since I blinked with my left eye second (#2) and the right eye first (#1), the left side would be overbalanced 2 to 1. So then I would blink with my left eye again (#3) and then the right eye again (#4) so that both the right and left sides would add up to 5. Then it got worse and I would think that since I started that pattern with the right eye, I would have to do the blinking pattern starting with my left eye. After doing that, I would obsess over the fact that the pattern starting with the left was #2, so I'd have to do another left pattern (#3) followed by another right pattern (#4) to even things out to 5 again. That's as obsessive as it'd get, but in a nutshell, if none of that made any sense, this is how it would go (R=right eye blink, L=left eye blink):
RLLR LRRL LRRL RLLR
Occassionally, I would feel like some of the blinks weren't as good as the others, so in order to reduce this "error" of my blinking, I would blink each eye twice like this:
RRLLLLRR LLRRRRLL LLRRRRLL RRLLLLRR
By the way, I would not do this in public, as I would get many strange looks. I usually did this right before going to bed when my lights were out. I think being in the dark elevated my fear of going blind.
I also occasionally did the same thing with plugging my ears for fear of going deaf.
Right after the blinking thing, I'd do the thing where you blur your vision to make two images of something with your right and left eye. If you can make two images, that means that you have vision in both eyes. If I did the blinking first, I'd have to do the double vision thing and vice versa. I think this is because I didn't trust either test completely.
This sounds really long winded and obsessive (yeah, i guess it was), but it usually only took me 10 seconds or less to do all of this.
Here's some other weird shit that I do:
-I have an obsession of messing with my hair, especially combing down my front bangs with my fingers. I used to constantly pull out my hair while messing with it.
-I constantly highlight text with the cursor when I'm reading anything on a computer. I'll usually start from the top and highlight down and then go from bottom to top. I'll do this really fast, and it makes it easy for anyone to know exactly what I'm reading on a certain page at any time.
-When taking tests or quizzes in school, I'll turn the paper over to see if there's any questions on the back. I sometimes do this 2 or 3 times.
-Making up success stories of competitive sports or various games while playing video games makes things a lot more interesting for me. For example, while playing Tetris or Mario Kart, I'll make up little stories in my head about how I'm an aspiring underdog competitor entering competitions to get to the top. I'll imagine myself winning competitions or setting world records in time trials. When I win or lose, I'll reflect on these performances in my head like any famous person would in an interview. Sometimes I'll write down my scores on paper to keep track of my various competing "seasons". It sounds weird but it makes video games that much more compelling for me.
-I have a bad habit of constantly re-reading stuff for tests and second guessing myself. This is why I do horribly on standardized reading tests. I'll read very slowly and re-read to make sure that I understood everything. Second guessing myself makes answering multiple choice questions in a time crunch difficult. This is the main reason that my reading score of 29 on the ACT was so much lower than my other scores. It also hurt me in the AP Language test I took last week.
-I read a story a while back about a person who found a snake or squirrel (I don't remember) in their toilet. For a long time after I read that, I constantly had to check the toilet before sitting down for anything of the sort in fear that something would come up and bite me (namely my testicles) while I was sitting there. I also had a bad habit of checking whether there was anyone or anything in the shower or closet of the bathroom every time I went in there. This probably resulted from watching horror films.
-When riding in the car with my parents, usually on road trips, I would imagine that our car was in a race, like Mario Kart. I would start our car in a certain place, for example 12th place, and set a time limit like 5 or 10 minutes. If a car passed us, we'd be in 13th place and if we passed a car, we'd be in 11th place. The goal was to be in first place by the end of the time limit. Like I did with video games, I'd make up stories in my head about these races as well.
-I used to have an obsession with taking my feet off of the ground whenever a clock struck a time with all of the numbers being the same, such as 3:33, 5:55, etc. I would imagine the floor turning to lava at these times, so if I didn't lift up my feet or get on top of a chair or something, I'd imagine getting burnt. I often did this at my computer, so taking my feet off of the ground resulted in a good minute-long abdominal workout.
-I used to smell my farts in bed. That's all I'm going to say about that.
Yeah, this was a really long post, so you guys probably link I'm really weird now, but I have a feeling that many of you did a ton of weird stuff; I'm just able to remember a lot of it. I'm also a senior in high school, so the fact that I'm still only a few years out of my childhood when I did these things might make it easier for me to recall them.
Shalashaska said:
If I'm talking to someone for a while, I'll start thinking about what would happen if I suddenly did something to them out of the blue. Such as punch them in the face.
I've done this too.