some people have quirks that you notice about them. these habits or odd behaviors might strike you as odd at first but you learn to get used to them or they are so much a part of the person that you overlook them.
for example.
my friend would fill two glasses with a beverage at mealtimes in the cafeteria. This is a fairly standard procedure: i always had at least two glasses of milk simultaneously in front of me at the beginning of the meal so that i wouldn’t have to fight a line later to get a refill. But he would drink the first glass, and then pour the contents of the second into the first glass in order to drink it. Why, you wonder, wouldn’t he just drink from the second glass?
or another friend i have, daniel, will be having a conversation with you, and randomly in between his comments, he would inhale with a very audible squeak. you know, the kind you have after you’ve laughed a lot and you inhale quickly to get more oxygen, violently enough to make a squeak. This wouldn’t happen all the time. just often enough to be a sort of habit. very strange.
sometimes when i’m sitting in the passenger seat of a car when certain people are driving, i can feel them trying very poorly to maintain some speed by pressing the accelerator harder than needed at first, but then let off completely to compensate, and continue in this pulsing fashion for quite a while until the next stop. I wonder if the driver is conscious of this strange waste of gas and somewhat uncomfortable experience. i always assume not, and end up believing that perhaps even i fall into such unconscious patterns when i drive. But it is very obvious as a passenger.
and then there’s my dad. he has a billion of these quirks. they’re mostly conversational, and often are purely delightful to those who are meeting him for the first time and don’t even know what crazy unconscious social quirks he has up his sleeve.
early this morning my father came in my room for a second to wake me up for work and then left to continue his morning routine. once i am disrupted from my dreaming, i often just lay there for 5 or 10 minutes to settle my mind into a regular, get ready for the day mood. During this period, i hear my dad (ever the morning person) fiddling with things in the kitchen, maybe moving chairs, walking across the house. But here’s the quirk:
In these standard early morning movements, he often whistles, hums, or sings a short bit of some tune and then stops. Then, maybe 20 seconds later, after his mind has been playing that same little sound bite of music over and over in his head, he totally unconsciously repeats it, and this cycle repeats all over the house, no matter what he’s doing.
This morning it was the McDonald’s new commercial jingle, the obstinately catchy and funky “Ba-da Da-ta-daaaa, i’m lovin it,” whistled every half-minute or so, leaving off the “i’m lovin it” part.
Oh he probably heard that stupid thing on the tv or something. Well yeah, maybe he did. But does he actually hear some equally catchy tune EVERY MORNING OF HIS LIFE? i don’t think so. But i swear, he’s always whistlin something. it can be anything: movie, play, tv show, classical, rock, church music…
“Flintstones, meet the flintstones… !”
Canon in D
Heyyyy Jude
“It’s the Dick Van Dyke show… da-da-da, dumdum Da Ta-daaaa.”
Dad’s always got a sound clip playing in his head.