idiosyncrasies

Whether you call it an obsession, an irritation, an annoyance or just generally a neurotic bout of OCD everybody has a ‘habit’. The idiosyncrasies which define you, shape you, isolate you or just generally confront you in social situations. To my friends, I am a self confessed sufferer of many subtle and absurd eccentricities which often leave some people guessing, and me just shrugging my shoulders.

To start with, and this may take some time because the passion I feel on this subject is equal the rage it induces in me.
Loud Eaters.

Simple words that boil my blood. I fall victim to this fate often, ever since the days of sitting at the family dinner table next to my loyal father who never took a bite without a loud puffing of breath, or a slight, ever so gentle scrape across the fork. Since the dawn of time this enrage me to the point that I was banned from loud public outburst to people with poor table manners and eating etiquette that I would forcible remove myself from the situation to calm my nerves.
Last night however was one of the most brutal assaults on my ears in history. Bless my housemates, for the fact she snacked on a cob of corn while watching Antique Roadshow, but she did so with the abandon that no-one was in the room...But I was. One of the quietest shows on television and a cob of corn. It started with a bite; I was immediately driven to distraction, then a slurp with a chew. No-one can eat corn quietly I tell myself and set about trying to sooth my nerves. I fail. By the time I gather the courage to leave the room my eye is twitching in rage and I am literally shivering in my room remembering the way it sounded.

Now this may seem exaggerated to you, but I kid not. In a quiet room, I also fall victim to a crippling embarrassment that comes with eating in front of people, for fear in fact that my own chewing will sound like the chewing I so desperately hate. I even go to the point, that my favourite snack food (pretty much plain smiths chips due to various reasons), I will sit quietly, put the chip in my mouth and hope that somehow, I have enough saliva in my mouth that the chips rough texture will be softened and when I finally bite into the chip, it is merely a smoosh, rather than the obnoxious chomp.

Another of these strange annoyances that plagues me is also the use of load packaging in a movie theatre. I know a very lovely girl, who despite best intentions of getting herself the best movie snack ever, somehow ALWAYS would end up with a packet of Nerds rattling between the pink and the purple while the heart break scene of some Germany war drama flashes on the screen. I would not be surprised to find this particular noisemaker with the packet of tic tacs during a minute silence ‘freshening her breath’ or satisfying the latest sugar binge that over took her.

Somehow I must not reveal all my weaknesses, so a few of the more...sensitive ones I will keep to myself. But last, but most of all not least, if my absolute inability to have music blaring loudly while stopped at lights/give way signs/parking or drive throughs. Much to my constant terror, friends have picked up on this phobia and now threaten me during long car trips with blaring music at awkward pauses in the road.

I guess the point of this was to share, but also to understand that we all have very unique habits, eccentricities, almost superstitions which for no other reason than it tweaked us, we respond in completely irrational and socially awkward ways. Please feel free to share anything so I do not come across this page as such a freak. But hey, Virginia Wolf that raging alcoholic, I think she had it right.

“When a subject is highly controversial... one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the change of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices and the idiosyncrasies of the speaker”...

SO... here’s to getting to know ME!