As I sit here with an ipod blaring Plush by STP in my ears, to avoid hearing whats going on with Lost, I feel like a total wack-job. You see, I am a full fledged wuss. I like to blame it on the fact that my Dad took me to see E.T. when I was 5. That movie scared the fuck out of me. I know what your thinking, E.T., that loveable alien that everyone from my generation adores?? Yes, I hate him. I mean I haaaate him. I slept on the floor in my older brother’s room for a long while after seeing it. I have never, ever watched the movie again. And most movies that deal with aliens or space are off limits because of the childhood trauma that was caused by E.T.
There are a couple other categories that fall into the same boat as E.T. Anything with suspense, I can’t hack it. I cannot handle suspense at all. Anything dealing with the armagedon. I do not even consider myself a Christian, but things dealing with the fight between heaven and hell, or the afterlife, nope, can’t do it. Oh, add ghosts to the list. No ghosts. Lost falls into the suspense and ghost category, hence why I sit here with the ipod blaring Black Star by Radiohead. (Jaos’ ipod’s shuffle is on fire tonight.)
I have been mocked my whole life for this. Jaos and my brothers often go to movies when we are together. They will tell me, ‘Sorry, its not a Larz/Slush pick” (My brothers call me Larz and Jaos really does call me Slush, not all the time. But, in situations like that, yes he does.) I am really okay with my quirks. I have always said quirks are the best part of people. I am naturally drawn to odd people with interesting quirks. Who wants to be normal and boring anyway??
Tell me what one of your major quirks is…the weirder the better in my book. Hopefully, you will make me feel better for being, kind of, a wacko.
slush 
I hate the windmills near Palm Springs. They are freaking creepy. I can’t even give you a link to a picture because then I would have to find one and look at it to confirm it’s authenticity.
Love your blog!
When i was little I was traumatized by Cape Fear and Arachnophobia. To this day I still can’t handle scary movies and I can not under any circumstances watch Arachnophobia alone.
I have a picture of the windmills by Palm Springs if you need a visual reference 🙂 – I don’t know if you can insert images in comments (can you?).
My quirk – well, #1 – I am terrified, TERRIFIED of fire. I refuse to use a lighter for anything, including birthday candles. I have no idea where this fear came from – I was never burned or in a burning building, or anything like that. But I am deathly afraid of an open flame.
I also have to eat things in even numbers. Things like potato chips, pretzels, M&M’s, etc. If I have an odd number I break the last one in half. Yeah, I’M a wacko!
OMG, slush! We have the same quirk. My friends often have to decide if things are “leafy approved” and have a rating system going. It’s sweet that they protect me. Luckily I don’t have a tv in my apartment and can avoid Lost completely. I couldn’t take it. So… lots of suspense, horror, gore, sex pics.. they are all gone.
Another quirk of mine is that I’m scared of heights. I mean stupid ones.. like stepping up onto a chair or a stool or a small stepladder kind of heights. Anything less than 20 feet heigh and I’m hyperventilating and kissing the floor when I return to it safely!
If you need to feel more normal, come hang out with me for a bit. Full fledged OCD, all the tappings, rituals, and annoying counting habits. Getting dressed ends up a funny little dance (and many years ago I had a job that required… errrr… a lot of outfit changes in a hurry, the ocd dance was on fast forward and looked even funnier). D is a very understanding man, he picks things for me when I get stuck in the loops and can’t decide. It’s gotten better now that I’m in a good situation, but there’s plenty of comedy around here!
oooh, like lemontartlet above OCD about everything. All must be perfect, sterile and not touching each other. I’m a scary neat/organized/germ a phobic. Which means …I can’t deal with messy places. Messy places are equivalent to Stephen King terror for me.
I’m just perfect now (ahem, ahem), but I used to line everything up in cupboards, like tins and bottles. I couldn’t sleep in a bed unless the duvet was equidistant either side. Hubs used to ask if he should bring a set square to bed. When I was much younger I used to go round the house checking every plug and turning off any that were not being used, no stand by TV in our house back then.
I do some counting things, like eating things in multiples of twos, chewing on each side evenly and I count stairs. Just going up stairs, not down, and only in sets of 4 (think back to counting in band 1-2-3-4… 2-2-3-4… 3-2-3-4 etc) And I have to climb 66 stairs to get to my desk every morning!
Don’t know if this is weird, but I ALWAYS take forever to decide what I want to eat. I could be at Dunkin Donuts and stare for at least 2 minutes, it’s worse when we’re somewhere with a huge menu…
I’m old enough to have seen all the original Star Wars movies in the theater the first time they were released. My brother and I went to see The Empire Strikes back and sat in the front row. I alway used to get a 3 Musketeers bar and a bag of pop corn for every movie but when Hans Solo cut open that beast and stuck Luke Skywalker into the bowels to keep warm, I had just bit into my 3 Musketeers bar. Ever since then, I have not been able to enjoy a 3 Musketeers bar because the sound of that scene still is in my head. Hey, I’m a sound designer…I remember sounds not visual images.
I guess that whole I do things with my ears is kind of weird too isn’t it?
OH one other thing that will make you fell less like a whacko. I hate having cotton balls any where near my my ears or around my ears. The feel of it and the sound of it is like someone scraping their finger nails down a chalkboard! In fact I just got shivers typing this…
Nope, you aren’t a whacko at all!
Oh, I think my friends would say I’m just totally nuts. But, the thing I think is whackiest about me? I collect lunatic conspiracy theories. The more idiotic the better. I find them funnier than most comedy.
THEN, depending on if it is aliens or underground dwellers who kidnap people, I get stupid scared and have to turn on every light in the house….
Yep, I’m a total doofus.
i can’t deal with anything end-of-the-wordly (like deep impact or armageddon) or anything end-of-the-wordly in SPACE. forget it. i can’t handle it AT ALL. hubby recently started watching battlestar galactica. i watched about 15 minutes of the first one. then i was all, “i’m out.” too freaky, scary. in a deep way for me.
I love these Q+A’s. 😉 My quirk that comes to mind is that I despise backtracking. If I have left the house and realize I forgot something, even if I have just left, I might not go back. Something about backtracking seems so hard to me.
PS– happily I did NOT have to backtrack on shipping your parcel out! 🙂
Hmm~ I use to love horror movies when I was younger. But after having my monkey, something about giving birth I guess scarred me. I can not will not watch horror movies. I can do the thriller creepy stuff but if there is blood and appendages I just can.not.do.it.
Also~ those radio shows where they call up people and prank/punk/whatever. I have to switch the station because I literally physically cannot listen. It just irritates me and makes me feel so uncomfortable. It doesn’t even have to be really that mean, just the whole fakeness of it literally makes my stomach tighten. I’m getting sick just thinking about it.
Um….I hate PB&J? Does that count? I absolutely abhor jelly. I always have.
I love those windmills by Palm Springs…I think they are so strangely beautiful. I was so excited to see that they put some out east on I-8 heading towards AZ.
The windmill-phobic should come to Glasgow: I see them from my window, way off in the distance, and they’re totally huge compared to the ones in San Diego.
I won’t watch things with much violence in them – particularly in the theater – as the images tend to stick in my head. Stuck with children’s movies, me.
I have to eat my M&M’s by color. And I count the stripes on the road while I’m driving. AND I figure out how much further I have on any task into the largest fraction I can.