I’ve recently noticed that it’s not really the big things in life that drive me crazy; it’s the little things, the idiosyncrasies of life, that keep me tossing and turning at night. So this week, let’s move away from the big picture and focus on the details, the idiosyncrasies that make and break our lives. But before I began my investigation into idiosyncrasies, I’d like to explore the difference between a bad habit, and an idiosyncrasy.
You see, drinking twenty shots of whisky every night at the bar until you pass out is not an idiosyncrasy; it’s an addiction, and it’s anything but unusual. But if you often order a shot of whisky and shoot it while eating a cashew, because you like the combination of cashews and whisky, then you’ve established one hell of an idiosyncrasy, because you are doing something that is peculiarly ridiculous and preposterous; hence it earns the title of idiosyncrasy. So to review: Driving 80mph in the suburbs while high on crack with loaded guns in your car, like your favorite NBA star or recording artist, is a stupid idea, and a bad habit if you do it often, but it’s just not an idiosyncrasy, because it is not a peculiar behavioral process. In today’s modern age of irresponsible celebrities, rampant disregard for personal safety is too common, or not peculiar enough, to be considered a candidate for idiosyncrasy anymore. So if you share a tendency or habit with others, it’s not an idiosyncrasy, it’s just an annoying habit; like eating pizza with a fork and knife. And voting for President Bush is not an idiosyncrasy either, even if you only did it once.
Now don’t misunderstand me, for I do not look down my perfect nose on all of you out there with idiosyncrasies, for I’m probably one of the more idiosyncratic fools in my generation. I like repetition, for one. I’m also a notorious creature of habit. And I like repetition, and keeping habits, by repetition. I order the same foods, at the same restaurants, at the same time, on the same days. An ex-girlfriend of mine constantly referred to me as ‘Old Man Rivers,’ because I go to sleep at the same time each night, I’m old fashioned, and I don’t like change. Consistent predictability is just one of my idiosyncratic claims to fame. I’m just weird enough in my desperate search for the mundane, that my boring personality has become an idiosyncrasy—let me expand.
My strangest idiosyncrasy would have to be the fact that I like to watch television without the sound, and with subtitles instead. I’ve gotten fairly good at reading subtitled sports and television shows because I go out to a lot of bars that have loud music and have therefore set the television to closed captioning for the hearing impaired. I feel sorry for the hearing impaired, and not just because they can’t hear well, if at all, but also because the people hired to translate the sounds of our world into text are horrible at their job. First of all, they fail to correctly spell most homonyms, giving the viewer/reader the wrong word in most cases, thereby slandering the very content and meaning of the sentence. And what is the worst of all is the apathetic attitude translators have towards translating the sounds of an audience. For example, if you ever watch a stand up comedy routine with subtitles, you’ll notice that translators only describe an audiences’ reaction in one of four ways: {Oohs}, {Applause}, {Whistles}, and {Cheering}. If you’ve ever been to a comedy club, I think you’ll agree that there are a lot more sound effects to describe than these four, like when someone has a really high pitched and annoying hyena laugh, that lasts longer than the crowds’ laugh. In such cases, I think the translator should translate that laugh, and type: {Awful, high-pitched hyena laugh that is annoying everyone at the show, including the stand up comic himself} {Mike is clever, applause}.
The routine that is my life has become an idiosyncrasy. On workdays, I awaken at exactly 6:30am, meditate, and take a shower. I then go to work, until 4pm. Upon returning home from work, I meditate again, change into gym shorts, and either go running, play tennis, or play basketball. On my days off, I get up around 6:44am (I call fourteen minutes of sleep ‘sleeping in’ on my off days), and go to the same exact coffee shop I’ve been going to since June of 2005 (Tiny’s on MLK), where I proceed to write, surf the internet, and do the crossword, until about 10 to 11 am, at which point I return home, change into gym shorts, and play basketball. At precisely 5:45pm, each day, I attend one of four bars within ten city blocks of my house, where I order the same cheap happy hour chicken wings and beer, and then I usually return home by 9pm to read a book in bed, and fall asleep by no later than 11pm. Yes, I’m really that boring—but, I like to observe things and think, so if I ever get paid to write, then I’ll have experienced a dream come true—but my true dream would be to get paid for eating chips and salsa, making fun of people, doing the crossword, and for watching sitcoms with subtitles on.
I’m not too normal when it comes to food, either. I like everything that I eat to be extra hot, temperature-wise, and spicy, but all food should also be crisp, and burnt medium well. I like the shakes and crumbles at the end of a bag of chips or snack crackers more than I like the actual chip or cracker as a whole. I love salt and fat, and hate sweets, unless it’s a snickers bar. So I never order dessert, and while I love the occasional piecrust, because it’s crunchy and not too sweet, I don’t like pies themselves, because they are too soggy and sweet for my liking. I hate cakes, and haven’t had a birthday cake in over ten years. But I love glazed doughnuts, so my mom once made me a birthday cake of stacked glazed doughnuts, and it remains my all time favorite birthday. I only eat two flavors of ice cream: vanilla or coffee, and I don’t like corn on the cob. But one of my best friends from high school, “Lautz,” he has me beat; he refuses to eat sandwiches.
But my idiosyncrasies don’t stop with food and repetition. I’m organized to a degree that probably rivals god himself (because cleanliness is close to godliness). If you were to open my wallet, for example, you would notice that the smallest bills surround the larger bills, in numerical order, and all the bills face the same way, and are ‘right side up’. Furthermore, my wallet has only the bare essentials: my credit cards, my debit card, proof of insurance, a drivers license, and of course, my mini pocket Oakland Athletics schedule for 2006. I don’t understand people who keep an unorganized wallet, full of business cards and money strewn about. I think a well-organized wallet reflects a well-organized mind, and that self-discipline and wallet maintenance are closely related. Call me Freud.
The interesting thing about idiosyncrasies is that, depending on who the person is, how they’re related to you, and what sort of personality you have, an idiosyncrasy can either be the most annoying character trait imaginable, or cute and endearing. And I think this is the secret to any and all relationships; finding the person who finds your idiosyncrasies cute and endearing, as opposed to annoying, obscene, and shameful. This is why I’m usually single, because in order to turn my theory into fruition, I would need to find a magical girl who finds it cute and endearing when I eat all my food far too quickly, spilling on myself two to three times per meal, sometimes spitting out half chewed food across the table as I try to tell a story or laugh before I’ve fully swallowed whatever it is that I’m eating. This magical heroine must also enjoy the fact that I hate surprises, observe, notice, and memorize everything that is audible, but nothing visual, and that I don’t ever think before I speak. And I’ve learned to enjoy the taste of my own foot.
But it’s not just animals that have idiosyncrasies, even inanimate objects, like apartments, have idiosyncrasies. If you go to a friends’ place, and they happen to live in a small apartment, like the kind where you can hear every noise from the bathroom in the apartment; then this apartment has an idiosyncrasy that is neither cute, nor endearing. I feel that such bathrooms should have a fan that dissipates both noises and scents. It’s really awkward to use the bathroom at someone’s house, and know that they can hear you breathing, and that you can hear every noise they make outside, it’s like they might as well tear down the walls, since you’re receiving little to no privacy as it is. I think this particular idiosyncrasy should be an EPA concern, since bathrooms have a lot to do with the environment, and an act of congress could mandate vents in bathrooms for all apartment complexes that are two rooms or smaller. Our current government is already obsessed with banning lifestyles and making laws that prevent rights, rather than granting rights, so I think the government should take a step back, and start trying to ban things that are within a person’s control, like apartment bathrooms without noisemaking fans. And while they’re at it, maybe congress can ban gay marriage, cause um, well, it would be, um, good, for the, um, economy? Hey congress, if you really want to improve upon marriages, just ban divorce, back up birth control, and stop sleeping with your interns.
But for the most part, idiosyncrasies are what make for humorous conversations and spontaneous laughter. Most people who get made fun of or laughed at often are victims of their own idiosyncrasies, and as a culture we should embrace the idiosyncrasies that differentiate ourselves from one another. Life is full of little and big surprises, but the little surprises can lead to great revelations and epiphanies. A good example of this happened to me this week, when I finally got my fifty-dollar rebate check from Samsung, for the new laser printer I purchased four months ago. I bought the laser printer to prove that I’m a serious writer, but what sealed the deal was the promise of a fifty-dollar rebate check, because I’m frugal (but not cheap!). But the rebate did indeed provide as a source of inspiration for me to remain trusting of gigantic corporation promises, because even though it took the same amount of time for Samsung to issue my rebate check as it took Christopher Columbus to discover the Americas, in the end, I got the check. And I thus got to go out after happy hour this week, and could afford regularly priced bar drinks and food, and for me, that’s breaking away from my idiosyncratic lifestyle of repetition, habit, and repetition. But every single rebate I’ve ever applied for has eventually arrived; even the five dollar one from Gillette for my fourteen-dollar electric razor, and when the check does arrive, you should be sure to thank the corporation for keeping their end of the bargain, and for not being idiosyncratic in their fulfillment of a promise, as I did this week, by toasting Samsung with one of my patented whisky and cashew shots.