Punctuated equilibrium.
Some of you may have noticed that I can be a grammar pedant at times. For a while, I was worse.

For a couple of years when I was 12 or 13 I was beholden to the idea that the punctuation marks in a sentence had a kind of numerical value, and that a well-constructed sentence would be one in which the value of the punctuation added up to an integer (in rather the same way that a bar of musical score has to have the right - whole - number of beats in it). If a sentence didn't meet this criterion, it'd be somehow unbalanced or unfinished.

A comma was worth one half of a "beat", for example; a semi-colon was worth one and a half beats. A colon - notwithstanding that I didn't use them much - was worth two. So a sentence could have two commas, or a coma and a semi-colon, because that way its value'd be a whole number. Just one comma in a sentence, though, would have been unacceptable - unless there was a semi-colon as well.

I commited syntactic atrocities just to get enough clauses and subclauses into my sentences in order that they obey the rule.

And then, suddenly, I stopped caring, at roughly the same time that a small number of my classes at school became co-educational. Odd coincindence, that.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:40, 7 replies)

Even though I live on my own I have to shut my bedroom door before I go to sleep
Otherwise the monsters will get me
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:35, 5 replies)

Also my lights.....
....in my house all have to switched the same way. I have a light at the bottom of the stairs which can be turned on and off at both a double switch at the top and one at the bottom, these all have to be swicthed the same way even if it means tripping up and down the stairs in the dark.
(I Love Noodles, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:29, 3 replies)

Not so much now but in the past I was in the habit of always carrying some tissues.
It got to the point where I would panic if I went out and didn't have any to hand. I hardly ever used them but I had to have them just in case. I'm also addicted to lip salve. I have one at work, one in my bag, one on my bedside table, one in my makeup bag and one on the living room table. As soon as I start to run out of one then I buy another immediatley. When I die, my lips will probably be the last thing to dessicate.

Oh and I used to hate leaving the house without any money. Just a pound would be enough to keep my feeling safe.

Oh and I very rarely run out of things at home. I always remember to stock up before it does.
( girlinthehole, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:29, 4 replies)

So I'm a nun
and I bought my last set of clothes at a middle eastern market.
( Pretender, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:19, 5 replies)

When I was a kid and saw the film Jaws.
I was convinced Jaws would get me in my sleep. This despite the fact I lived in Lancashire, at least a mile from the nearest river with a sea connection and a long way from Amity, which I was dimly aware was probably somewhere off the south eastern United States.

So, assuming Jaws survives the end of the film, can navigate the river Irwell as far as Bury, hop out of the water, thrash his way across fields and two major roads, open a garden gate latched on the inside (which even human beings with their opposale thumbs found nigh on impossible to work), break down a door, climb upstairs and manouver a complicated bannister arrangement to my childhood bedroom to bite me, he would then have to have a bite length of at least 23 inches as I habitually slept as close as possible to the wall in order to avoid this admittedly remote possibility. Fuck you Jaws, you were never going to get me.
( Smallbrainfield, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:07, 7 replies)

The wife insists she migt have left her straightners on
At first I checked - now I don't bother - they've never once been left on.
She also panics about whether she's left a tap running when we go out, or whether the gas is on, or the oven on.
Matters not if she hasn't actually used any of these things.
(Rogerthepussy, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:07, 2 replies)

Radio in my car
The volume has to be at a even number, if it gets left on a odd number a kitten gets killed.
(I Love Noodles, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:05, 4 replies)

counting stairs
no matter where i am, i have to count the stairs whenever i go up them. i know how many stairs there are in all my friends' houses and even the pub. i know it's weird, but i just have to.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:01, 6 replies)

Possessive Flatmate
She was really protective about her stuff and used to label things.

Now, I can understand if it's something like your butter. I find it a bit weird, but I can just about understand that you really don't want people using it so you've politely labelled it.

However, we had one of those holder things for plastic bags, and she labelled her plastic bags. She had little paper nametags that she sellotaped onto them.

I could even have just about got my head around this if they were really good plastic bags (ones from Debenhams with nice handles, or something). They weren't. They were from Sainsburys.

She was also so protective that she'd put a lock on her room and would get her keys out and lock her room up. Even just to go downstairs to the kitchen.

Despite feeling this way about her own stuff/space, she would happily wander into my room at will. I'd often come home to find she'd gone in to open/close my window. She also used to move my food around in my cupboard and throw stuff away if she didn't like the look of it - this had nothing to do with being out of date, she just thought it looked like it might be 'bad'.

On one occasion I came home to find that she'd removed my bedsheets from my bed and washed them.

I asked her not to do this sort of thing, of course, but there was always a reason, to her mind, that was so compelling that she just HAD to do it, no matter that it was my stuff.

I ended up moving out after a massive argument. Her attitude was 'It's how I am - you have to deal with it'. My reply being that no - it's how YOU are, so YOU have to deal with it. I don't.

Be OCD, by all means, but do it with your OWN stuff. If you do it to other people's stuff - well, just try and imagine how much it would annoy YOU the other way round, and you might start to understand why people get annoyed.

Ah! I feel well vented after that...
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:57, 1 reply)

I'd like to tell you all about my habits, tics and rituals.
But I have to rush home to check I've not left the hob on.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:53, Reply)

It's a bizarre habit I didn't even know she had.
I graduated from university yesterday. (Queue cheers)
I also moved out my flat to come live with the parents again (Cyoo rather fewer cheers) and despite that I'm still stuck with a huge council tax bill (Kyue groans and wailing).
Anyway, I was negotiating the return of my cleaning deposit, because whilst I've moved out, my flatmate is remaining, so things were a bit complicated. Meanwhile my family was shifting the last of my stuff down seven flights of stairs to the car. So it's me, the new tenant there to sign her lease, my flatmate and our landlord - who I'm fairly sure is Pakistani, but I've never cared enough to actually check.

Having finished moving my possesions, Mum decides to come see how I'm doing on the deposit front. Having my best interests in mind, she naturally storms into the room, and without waiting to see what's actually going on, comes out with these immortal words.

"I want you know this isn't good enough. I don't bloody trust Asian landlords. I'm really annoyed at this, I've probably funded a whole Al Quaeda cell by now."

What.

The.

Fuck?

Apparently my mum's new habit is bigotry. I had no idea. She's never even given the slightest hint of thinking in such bullshit terms before - I want to emphasise this; it was completely out of the blue, it's not like she normally spouts this nonsense round the dinner table while everyone looks away embarrassed; she's fairly liberal and not yet of an age where it used to be normal to talk like that.

And then suddenly she starts blurting it out in the middle of a perfectly civil discussion.

My flatmate was speechless, the new tenant didn't know where to put her face, and my brother had to literally shove her out the door to get her to shut the bloody hell up. Cheers mum, really helping here.

She does have reason to be pissed off at various of my landlords, especially since I got ripped off for the deposit last time I moved, but seriously? Did she forget this is a different guy? Did she forget that bunch were white, ginger, Scottish twats? Did she forget the BLOODY BASIC RULES OF EVEN TENUOUS SOCIAL DECENCY??? Wanting to thump your own mother is a terrible thing, but at that moment I bloody could have.
To make things worse, she spent the journey home trying to defend herself, until it was unequivocally stated by all three of us that she had said quite enough, that she was continuing to embarrass herself, and it would be most appreciated if she would keep her sodding tongue behind her sodding teeth from now on.

Apolgies for tenuity - in fact I sincerely hope this isn't technically relevant, as I can foresee problems if it does become a habit of hers. I'm still very, very angry about it the next morning and I need to vent.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:50, Reply)

I cannot have 13 e-mails.
Especially work emails. I will go out of my way to not have 13 emails, even to the extremes of working late to reduce new email to a non-13 shaped amount.
I like to think I am not a superstitious person, but for some reason, 13 e-mails drives me to distraction and cannot be allowed.
( Smallbrainfield, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:50, 13 replies)

My friend used to tap on wood, just with her fingernail, always in threes. I picked up this annoying habit.
My sort of method would run like this

-tap when someone says something bad about someone else
-tap when you say something bad about someone else
-tap when you think something bad about someone else
-tap when someone says 'God damn'
-tap when you are worried something bad is happening or will happen, i.e. 'why aren't my parents answering the phone? did the house burn down?! *taptaptap*'
-tap when you want something good to happen, i.e. 'Oh I really like Jack, I hope he asks me out, he's soooooo dreamy *taptaptap*'

I've dropped the habit, but I randomly pick it up now and again.
It can be thoroughly annoying, I went on an overnight trip with the bff and was laying in the hotel bed tapping the headboard. When she said "God, you even do it in your sleep?!" I realised how ridiculous I was being.
( Lisette von Falcon, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:46, Reply)

Herbs and Spices
Always in a drawer lying flat and in alphabetical order.

Some git *always* muddles them up.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:45, 1 reply)

I MUST switch off unused electric sockets
To stop the electricity leaking out.
(North Utsira South Utsira, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:44, 6 replies)

wires on show
just recently moved in with the furher, and she hates wires being on show. Phone charger wires, tv, pc, toaster etc..... drives me round the bend. So i bought a 25 metre ethernet cable from downstairs to upstairs instead of a wireless router.
That'll teach her!
(She is the walrus superMinx, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:43, 1 reply)

Mine
alphabetical always I in order sentences write.
(yokelrobin THE NERD WHOSE HAIR DEFIES GRAVITY/FASHION, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:43, 4 replies)

I have a lot of 7" records
over 300 by now. They live in a big box that's far too heavy for me to lift, especially when they're all in there. If they're not in order, it's time-consuming and annoying flicking through to find the one I want to listen to.
I like sorting them by artist and release date, it takes about an hour when they're really shuffled up, and when they're all sorted it gives me a warm sense of achievement.

Then I pull them all out and shuffle them up again.
(and now for someone completely different, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:42, 1 reply)

shopping
My better half intensely dislikes selecting the front most item from shelves in supermarkets. Maybe she thinks that other shoppers have touched and tainted it in some way.

Little does she know, that before calling her attention to a potential purchase, I routinely swap the front product with the one behind it. Muhahahahah!
(Simian Typewriter Supplies Pty. Ltd. is house hunting in the neighborhood of infinity, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:40, 5 replies)

I
count everything in my head.

Climbing stairs, stapling paper, putting cuttlery away, I have a constant ticker going as I'm doing it.

With stairs, I know how many stairs there are in most of the places I frequent, and I usually take them 2 at a time - if there's an odd number of stairs, I will take one step at the beginning of the ascent/descent, so I don't have an odd one at the end.

I also have a strange habit of hearing 'colours' in sound. Bass is black, trebble is white. Fuzzy sound is yellow. The crappier a set of speakers are, the more yellow the sound is to me.
( Not Pineapple anymore, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:38, 10 replies)

Before I go to bed
I have to sing O Fortuna and the Hallelujah Chorus. All the way through.
( Flowerpot No longer has the vapours thanks to DTH, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:35, 2 replies)

When I was a child...
...and for no good reason, I decided that it was bad luck to step on the penultimate stair in any flight of steps. I have no idea why, but it was a habit I kept up for well over five years.
(mcnelson, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:32, 1 reply)

I have a rather large collection of dvds
All in alphabetical order on the rack, friends find it funny to mix them up sometimes. Not the boxes, the actual dvds! Wankers!
(Kip, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:32, 1 reply)

If I'm eating something
or drinking something. I have to finish it, even if I'm really full up or if we're leaving the pub in a hurry.

You might think I'm a fat bastard and you'd probably be right..
( whenanimalsattackhumans clad in global hypercolour, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:27, 4 replies)

I file books/CDs on shelves
running right to left.
People who shelve left to right are weird.
I have to force myself not to rearrange bookshops......
(greatoldone Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl f'tagn, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:23, Reply)

This pc has a compulsive need to log me out.
Every post - I need to log in again. Switch to /OT, I need to log in again. Started doing it a little while ago.
Luckily I only use this pc twice a week. One of us needs therapy.
( Larry Vest One day at a time, sweet Jesus, FFS., Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:21, 2 replies)

OCD, moi?
I tend to get the heebie jeebies if things aren't lined up in height order; always pick up the second magazine/newspaper on the shop shelf (first one's been groped too many times); when washing up, always have to alternate between cutlery drainers to make sure that I don't show a preference *ahem*, always have to pick the first mug I touch, even if I want to use another one (to avoid hurting the first one's feelings). I could go on, but frankly, looking at this list, I'm beginning to realise I'm more of a freak than I thought I was :0(
( parttimebabe is almost there..., Thu 1 Jul 2010, 13:21, 2 replies)