Quirks come in Sixes

I was tagged by Katie, and though chain letters tend to give me the mange, I guess I'd better play along this time. So...six quirky things about me?

Well...

1. I used to "flap". When I was younger (much younger, in my own memory, although some of my friends claim that I was still doing this as late as my early teens), I would be in the midst of drawing a picture when I would suddenly stop, stare down at the image, and commence "flapping". This involved holding both of my hands near my ears, and twirling them vigorously at the wrists, palms down. It's the wierdest thing to try to describe, and it's diffcult to reproduce. You had to have been there. But apparently I did it all the time. I'm not sure if it was joy at what I was producing or something else. Thank God I wasn't born any later than I was (1977); if I was a kid nowadays doing that I'm sure my poor folks, upon witnessing something so bizarre, would have dosed me seven ways from Sunday with every kind of medication available.

2. I positively detest the sound of nails being filed with an emory board. It's just not freakin' NATURAL! Stop it!!

3. Once when I was seven or eight I developed a short-term quirk (is there such a thing?): if I drank anything at all, I had to go and pee before I left the house or did anything else important. I just couldn't abide the thought of not getting rid of whatever I'd just consumed. At any rate, it was done by the time I was nine or ten. I don't think this ever applied to #2's...Oh god, you just learned a whole lot more about me than you probably ever cared to, didn't you?!?

4. If I sit down in a chair anywhere, I almost always have to have something in my lap; a book, a pillow, a jacket, something. I guess this illustrates how for some people, the need for a security blanket doesn't diminish with age. Or maybe it's something psychological, maybe relating to how I need to "protect" myself by placing some physical item between myself and the next person. I never was good at psychology...

5. I can't allow water spots in a sink. If I'm washing my hands in any sink, anywhere in the world, and I see that the last person left large waterspots on the sink, I must physically remove them before I leave. You'd think from that that I'm a neat freak, but I'm not. Like most single adult males, I let my bathroom get pretty scuzzy before I decide to clean it. And my car gets more permanent junk every year. But sinks...

6. A recent quirk: I don't like carrying my car keys in my pockets if I can avoid it. I keep thinking that the keys will wear down the pocket liners and suddenly burst out of the front of my pants, thus ruining them. So, if I'm wearing a jacket, I'll stuff the car keys in the jacket pockets (apparently I'm convinced that the jacket pockets are indestructible). Or if I sit down at a friend's place and I'm in front of a coffee table, I'll drop the keys there. The only time when I feel good about carrying my own car keys in my own pockets is when I'm wearing shorts with long, deep pockets (of which I have several pairs). Then it's no problem. One of these days I'm going to lose my keys from this quirk, although to date I've never lost a set of my own keys.

So, there ya go; six quirks about me that must surely have convinced you how strange I am, despite my apparent ordinary-ness. For the six people I've tagged, it's your job to come up with six of your own.