Tap, tap, tap, tap
As a certified mentalist, I have about a billionty of these. Seems I'm not alone in some of them, which is kind of heartening. A selection:

1) I am obsessed with numbers and counting everything I do or see to ensure a 'good' number. 2, 4, 5, 7 and 9 are 'good' and 3 and 6 are to be avoided at all costs. I don't recall the exact logic behind this but it goes right back to childhood, and I have been known to get halfway into town and have to go home because I think I've touched my front door three times. Fruitcakery.

2) I also 'balance', i.e. have to touch things with my right hand if I've touched them with the left. This is somewhat awkward when some bloke walks past me in the street, accidentally brushes my hand, and I have to fight with myself not to run after him and essentially stroke him O.o

3) Like a lot of others, it seems, I absolutely cannot walk on someone's right. It makes me deeply uncomfortable, like I have earwigs under my skin. Unfortunately, my sister shares this one with me, and when we're together we spend the whole time ducking behind one another and swapping sides. She now has a pushchair with her wherever she goes, which incapacitates her a bit.

4) I can read very fast, but if I start focusing on the punctuation, I can spend a frustrating half-hour or so on a couple of pages. I have to balance everything on a double page spread, e.g. two dashes on this page, must find two dashes [but not three, oh, god, please not three or I'll have to find five on each side] on the opposite page. And so on with full stops, exclamation marks, etc. I constantly check page numbers and flick back to check the *exact* words used in an unimportant sentence that caught my eye as I turned over the page. Over and over, and 'what was that?' [does it matter?] 'I NEED to know!' Apparently, watching me read is an interesting experience.

5) I fidget constantly, but I have a real thing for sticky labels. There is literally nothing in our bathroom, my bag, or my girlfriend's make up bag that has a label on it. If I have nothing to play with, I get extremely edgy. Which, I think, is why she sacrificed her make up bag to me on a long train journey. I also like those blister packs tablets come in. As I take a few different medications, I have a steady supply, and once I've straightened out the plastic and pulled off the foil, I add them to a huge blister-pack block I'm building on my bedside table. I've got to the point where I actually ask the pharmacist for my meds in a specific configuration so that the packets will fit on it *sigh*

6) Handwashing and obsessive cleaning to the point of near-constant contact dermatitis. As I work in a high-risk environment [rehab centre, so lots of ex IV-drug users] I have to cover the open wounds with loads of plasters when I go in, meaning I constantly look like I've been savaged or working in a mine, or some such. Gf nags me to wear gloves to clean. I nag her to use the right fucking chopping board for her raw meat. You can't always get what you want.

7) Singing along to TV theme tunes -- I'm VERY ritualistic, if you hadn't noticed. Every Saturday breakfast time must begin with a rousing rendition of the West Wing theme [Do do dooo, do do dooo, do do doo do doo doo dooooo']. Mushrooms cannot be chopped without 'Time for Miracles' by Adam Lambert, and rats on the bed, on my shoulder, on the sofa, etc must be serenaded with a bastardised version of 'There's a rat in my *whatever* what am I gonna do?' Found out this morning that gf didn't previously know this was a real song and just thought it was me being... well, me.

We also have several ritualistic games, the strangest of which is probably 'Name that fish'. The first object of Name that fish is to realise that you are playing Name that fish. Apropos of nothing, one player [usually me] mimes a fish. Your job, of course, is to realise that no, she's not sticking her arms out for no reason, she's being a plaice. This game can now be played in company, such as:

'I know, mum, I couldn't believe it--oh, shark!--yeah, so then he told me he wanted me to call him Lola Fuckweasel.'

Ooh. My mother and I also like to play 'he's dead'. We had no idea we were doing anything strange until gf pointed out that most people don't greet any passing mention of a deceased celebrity with mutters of:

'He's dead.'
'Ooh, yes, he is.'
'Dead.'
'Yep. Dead.'

I don't think this is my fault. My mother, not me, is the one who, at the age of 52, triumphantly announced that she had figured out that toothpaste is called toothpaste... because it's paste. For your teeth. Genius.

I am not mad. But if I am, it's genetic.
(Samara Morgan is a small blue thing, like a marble or an eye, Sat 3 Jul 2010, 16:12, 1 reply)

With regards to the 'dead' thing,
I do the same thing but with animals in various films e.g. the dog from the film 'K9' he's dead. 'Hooch' from 'Turner and Hooch', he's dead too. This has proven to be a really good way to depress people.
( Funkenschlag still likes dogs more than cats, Sun 4 Jul 2010, 10:02, closed)