What’s The Strangest Thing You Do
What’s The Strangest Thing You Do
What’s something you do that would make other people think WTF?
I don't mow my lawn.
Fully invested in the no lawn movement, I've been slowly replacing my grass with "no-mow" fine fescue grasses that fall over when they grow long instead of standing up straight. They grow slowly and are meant to not be mowed most of the summer season, just a couple times in the spring and cut down low in the fall.
Between that and using shredded leaves as mulch in my flower beds or lasagna mulching to create a new flower bed, my neighbors definitely think I'm a bit off.
According to my husband and all my friends, the weirdest thing about me is my name for a sandwich.
Apparently, everyone else calls it a 'grilled cheese'. I have always called it by it's proper name, a 'toasted cheese'.
If you make it in a panini press, then it is a grilled cheese. But if you make a sandwich by buttering each side and toasting it in a pan on the stove until the cheese melts, then it is a toasted cheese. But every time I say 'toasted cheese', people look at me as though I have grown another head.
I'm a chronic joint-popper. Fingers, toes, neck, and back are all pretty standard fare for most people. But a lot of people get weirded out when I pop my shoulders, elbows, ankles, knees, or hips. Sometimes I can make something around my sternum pop, but usually only after waking up from a long sleep.
One day I saw advertised these birdhouses with little accordion-like appendages, the same kind most air conditioners have that allow them to fit into windows, and I bought several of these, one per window. On the side facing the outdoors, birds find a little hole and can venture inside, as is typical of a birdhouse. On the side facing the inside of my home, the same birdhouses have tiny windows, like those one-way viewers hotel doors have, that allow anyone to see into the birdhouses, as well as the secretly built option to open it like a door, either while no bird is inside (makes cleaning them easy) or, if someone for some reason felt devious (I wouldn't, and would never give anyone the key to said birdhouse doors), while a bird was in there, which would force it to honor the will of the owner of the home with all the said birdhouses (again, I would never use this feature, unless maybe a bird was injured or something and needed help).
Alright, with all that said... while I have no plans to ditch any of the birdhouses, I will admit I've received complaints that the combination of a few dozen birdhouses in unison is noisy in the morning, like you wake up at six in the morning and it sounds like the birdie house of commons. People say such bird hospitality is unbecoming of an inn attendant. Is it though? Is it? That said, this is usually when the noise cancellers aren't working.
All 3 of the stuffed animals that don't leave my bed all have their own distinct voice and personalities. I sometimes have conversations with them (just not out loud).
Gavin, my stuffed turtle pillow has the personality of a chill middle aged man who's proud of his son since he's been with me since I was maybe 4-5 and has dealt with a lot of my bullshit. He loves when I rub his shell.
Jake, my polar bear I got from a hospital when I was maybe 12, is a pretty happy and optimistic man with a voice that is a little high pitched and scratchy. He loves wearing his little bandana I fashion around him like a neckerchief and his little when it's spring or summer.
Laura, my stuffed brown rabbit I got maybe a year and a half ago, is a female with a voice like Tsumugi from Danganronpa V3. She's Jake's slightly older sister. I like to cuddle her because she's the softest of all 3 and because she's the easiest to cuddle with. She's my little dress up bunny, despite the fact she only has one outfit. It took some time, but she eventually got used to her outfit.
Edit:
Nobody probably thought this, but I totally looked this over and my autistic brain totally thought the part about Gavin made it sound like my actual dad isn't proud of me, which is false.
Also, I don't know anyone else in their mid-20s who does this.
You might be too right.
My wife lives in another county and is only around on the weekends.
She is a huge turtle nut and has several stuffed turtle toys on the bed. I'm in finance journalism and sometimes talk to the turtles about convertible bond transactions and other boring stuff.
It helps me work through things. Probably headed for an institution in the future.
I wander around at weird hours with food and drinks on me, offering them to homeless people. A lot of them are initially (understandably) suspicious because they might think I'm trying to grift them into attending some church or exploiting them in some startup scheme, but with some patience and established trust they often get used to you when you come around the next time.
There's lifetimes lived out there and people that will share their stories with you if you brought some pizza.
I brush my teeth in bed and swallow the toothpaste at the end. According to the chemical fact sheet swallowing my toothpaste is well within osha defined limits for sodium flouride, and people who live in places with naturally more fluoridated water than where I am are exposed for far more than I am. so I really don't think there is any health concern. I have been doing it for a decade now and I have no symptoms of over exposure. I find it greatly helps me fall asleep if I don't have to get out of bed to brush.
I have little dance moves that I like to use when walking around the office. Little turn on heel here, stand on tiptoe there, round the corner in a fluid motion, balance on one leg, little jump, etc.
It's not that obvious if you look at me at first glance and I make sure to keep the really visible moves for when I'm alone. But it's something I'm doing (un)consciously most of the time. I guess I just like being light-footed :)I don't change my clocks for daylight saving time and live on permanent winter time all year, and just do the conversion in my head when dealing with the outside world.
For some reason this really confuses some people and I get all kinds of questions about it whenever the clocks change.
I think it's perfectly reasonable and think people setting their clocks to the wrong time for half the year is strange.
It's more like what I don't do: I don't establish habits when interacting with other people. For example I don't go buy coffee at the same place every day. Even if there is a place I like and I'm passing next to it every day I will mix it up a bit. Not go some days or change the order. The only reason is for the people in the store not to notice that I have a habit. I think they would think it's weird. And it's not like I have some social phobia. I make friends and interact with people normally. It's just this one thing: a fear that a shopkeeper will say "the same as always?". No, you don't know what I want. You don't know me at all!
I just realised that I probably wouldn’t realise it was strange, I might have to ask someone who knows me
I shave the parts of my chest within 10cm of my nipples, so that suction toys stay on properly.
I always read out loud. Always. And I do most of my readings while walking. So I imagine hearing me waking around taking to myself make other people think 'wtf?'.
If I have just about any kind of bread, I have an irresistible urge to dip it in liquid. Specifically, chocolate milk, apple juice, or certain types of soup. Peanut butter sandwiches too, but not in soup lol. Well, maybe?
It started in kindergarten. Every morning I'd eat breakfast at school: chocolate milk, cereal, and a biscuit. Chocolate milk goes in the cereal, eat cereal, then dip the biscuit in the milk in the bowl. This continued through fifth grade. I was pretty anti-social to begin with, but this weird quirk scared away any would-be friend who tried to sit with me. Heh.
Never grew out of it though. Now I just do it when nobody's looking. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Nothing to add, just wanted to say @Rocky60@lemm.ee this is an excellent post!
Nothing 😔
I got a spectrum diagnosis as a kid, but worked really, really hard to get good at socializing. Part of that, and something I still do to this day, is to run lines like an actor when I'm alone, or think I'm alone. I'll say the same thing again and again in different ways, until i've found the "performance" i like.
I didn't realise it was strange until my sister complained about it being incomprehensible gibberish, but I listen to podcasts at at least double speed.
One of the characters on the Hideous Laughter podcast Interlude episodes had long pauses between words so I kept speeding it up until they stopped bothering me. Then everything else sounded weird at normal speed and I'd get bored during the pauses between people speaking, so now they're all on 2-2.5x speed.