Or, What did I inherit along the way that makes me special?
(or, what might I still be doing that doesn’t work for me, and that I have the power to change right now?)
Are you still doing stuff that’s been obsolete for years, but it’s bone-deep in your Unconscious? I don’t mean just prewashing the dishes before you load them into the dishwasher, I mean really weird stuff you learned in your family. It’s hard to give up, because it’s so automatic you probably don’t question it.
My grandmother, Fairy, used to tell the story (which she probably stole from the Reader’s Digest) about how when she was a young wife she always used to cut her roasts in two and put the larger portion in one pan and the smaller in another. She had always done it that way. When someone finally asked her why, she said it was because her mother had. Finally she asked her mother why, and the old lady said, “Well, honey, I don’t know why you do it, but I didn’t have a pan big enough for a whole roast.”
Fairy’s version was greatly expanded, but then she always used to say, “Honey, any story worth telling is worth putting a top hat and cane on.”
I was seventeen before I found out that not all people put toothpaste on their thumbs.
We had four family members and one bathroom. Also one tube of toothpaste. If we all scraped our brushes against the same toothpaste tube, weren’t we spreading germs? Of course! So mother taught us to squeeze out a little worm of Colgate onto the first joint of our left thumb, apparently reasoning that germs are not easily transmitted via thumb backs. (Never mind that the backs of our thumbs might be germy too. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere.) We would then pick up the little toothpaste worm by the bristles of the brush and brush our teeth.
This is an actual historical fact, which my sister will attest to.
I spent my entire childhood and adolescence putting toothpaste on my thumb, then picking it up with the toothbrush, and then brushing my teeth.
Fast forward to my first day at college. Big communal bathroom in a girls’ dorm, rows of sinks, rows of toothbrushing girls. I am humming away, doing my toothpaste-on-thumb ritual, when I realize that the girl at the next sink is staring at me in the mirror, her arm frozen halfway to her mouth.
“What are you doing?” Silly question. “I’m brushing my teeth.”
“But why did you put the toothpaste on your thumb?”
Dead silence. Moment of truth. No answer. (Doesn’t everyone?)
(Because I’m weird, honey, and I come from weird people. I’m the only one who uses this tube of toothpaste, but this is how you do it.)
What weird habits do you have from childhood? What bizarre family behavior has become automatic with you? Send them to me, and I’ll publish the most outlandish in my newsletter, with or without your name, as you wish. We eccentrics have to stick together.
Eccentricity loves company!
