six quirks/weird habits

I’ve seen this darting around the blog pond like a frisky little minnow, and thought I’d dip my toes into the water.

1) I hate getting my neck touched. Like, to a degree where I come close to freaking the F out if anybody even attempts to get near my neck. I tense up and instinctively protect my neck. I can’t wear chokers or turtlenecks, either, and I’ve been this way my entire life. In my defense, during my hospital stints as a baby, doctors often had to withdraw blood from my neck, so my neck issues most likely have a legitimate genesis.

2) I can’t stand sirens—they make me very tense—and I have to plug up my ears whenever I hear them.

3) I’ve got texture and fabric issues. I can’t get wool anywhere near my body and can’t stand sitting/lying on pilly or torn fabric. I can’t bring myself to sit on torn leather seats. I think tagless shirts are the greatest invention of the 21st century. (Yes, I realize how insane I sound right about now.) The texture issues extend to food, which, I’ve been told, isn’t overly uncommon among congenital anosmics. I love hummus but hate how chickpeas feel in my mouth. I like eating nuts but hate how they feel when mixed with ice cream and baked goods. I hate how minestrone beans feel when I encounter them in soup. Back when I still ate meat (albeit a limited range of it, because I wasn’t a meat lover at all), I hated the texture of crumbly meat, like Hamburger Helper and sloppy joes. I won’t touch even the vegetarian versions of those items. I hate how raw onions feel in my mouth. I despise the texture of coconut, cheesecake, pumpkin pie, and crumbly, graham-crackery crusts on cakes and pies.

4) I’ve never been drunk and have never gotten anywhere close to trying drugs. In today’s culture, this elicits raised eyebrows (the drunk part, not the drugs part), but what are you gonna do.

5) I freaking love disaster books, movies, and documentaries. Everything from stories about the end of the world to freak disasters like the 1986 Lake Nyos tragedy in Cameroon.

6) I’ve got bad luck in the bathroom. Oh, shush, I’m not talking about that. What I mean is that even though I’m not really a klutz in regular life, I’ve had a series of klutzy mishaps in various bathrooms. The first occurred in a Rome hotel when I was 17. I lost control of the shower hose and blew up three of the four lights over the sink (across the room!), causing glass to spray everywhere. In the past two years I: lost my balance and fell out of Heather’s dad’s shower, slamming my ass cheek onto the porcelain lip of his stand-alone shower as I crashed to the floor, leaving a bruise the size of Detroit on my ass; lost my balance and fell out of Mom’s shower, taking the shower curtain and curtain rod with me; and accidentally scalded myself in Papa’s shower, causing me to rip one of the faucet handles out of the wall in a blind panic as my skin burned.


song heard most recently before posting: A Man and a Woman—U2
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