I am a cis-gendered female, and my ring finger is longer than my index finger, like a dude’s.
I am not a fan of television monitors on one channel, with no volume control, in places like car dealership lobbies, public waiting areas, lobbies, et cetera. I usually bring a book or two and letter-writing supplies, and earplugs or my SanDisk Sansa mp3 player to drown out the television. I do watch television shows, but they must be ones I want to watch, at a time and place of my choosing. If that’s not freak enough for you, focus on the “i write penfriend letters in longhand with fountain pens.”
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I will try to avoid oneupmanship, but I’ve done the same over 47 years. What surprises me in retrospect is just how weird that seems to make people like us. I mean, I can’t speak for your motivation, but mine isn’t really rooted in any family history of alcoholism nor any moralistic judgment against drinking. I just can’t stand the taste of alcohol, and the six or eight drinks I’ve had in memory have been trying various drinks to see if any are palatable. White wine, red wine, Michelob, bourbon & seven, Sex on the Beach, frozen margarita, Moscow Mule, Mudslide… they all taste like dragster fuel to me. And yet so very many people go to some lengths to acquire the “acquired taste” of alcoholic drinks. Don’t think I’ll ever get it.
I’m with you again here. Could be you have the same aversion to bitterness that I do.
When it comes to animals, no matter how cute & furry, I like 'em and I’m good to 'em, but I’m not very sentimental about their mortality. I’m very resistant to anthropomorphizing them, and I used to get pretty weirded out by people who would be more emotionally affected by, say, Old Yeller’s death (to the point where I feel like I gotta spoilertag that) or, even more so, what happened to Old Dan and Little Ann at the end of Where the Red Fern Grows rather than what happened to Rubin Pritchard in the same book. But at some point I came to realize that I myself appear to be some kind of heartless weirdo for this. At least in the circles I move in. Loss of human life still bothers me more than loss of nonhuman life, and I have had to come to terms with the fact that a whole lot of people I like and respect (present company included) disagree to some extent with that set of priorities.
I used to love black olives enough that I thought drinking the juice like that would be A Good Thing. It did not live up to expectation.
I’m with you, Abe. I have a hard time not trying to put myself into their shoes and understand why they did what they did.
Does anyone do that? Christ, that would annoy the hell out of me, too, if I ever encountered it. Haven’t yet, so I’ve been lucky.
I agree again!
As for my own, all-original freakishnesses…
Hmm. Like @Kimmo, I’m pretty durned vanilla. Here’s a not-very-secret shame: I make my favorite burritos with the following ingredients in a flour tortilla: ground beef, refried beans, grated cheddar cheese (or a “Mexican blend” from the grocery store), chopped olives, and ketchup. God help me, a 4th-generation San Diegan who used to be married into a very Mexican family, I like ketchup on my burritos. It was only last year that I discovered two of my sisters still like to do this, too. It made us closer than we’ve been in decades.
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Oh! I just remembered something that is apparently pretty weird about me. Some might be squeamish, so I’ll spoilertag: I got my “red wings” shortly after high school, and several times since, and I’ve really never quite understood why anyone would be as devoutly grossed out by that as so very many of my friends (and girlfriends) have seemed to be about it.
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I’ve done the same for…three days?
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It’s interesting that a housemate of mine is a teetotaler for the same reason; any form of alcohol just tastes bitter and awful to him. He also can’t drink coffee or tea for that reason, and hates oranges due to their “intense bitterness”. Whereas I love the flavor of coffee and have bottles of bitter amaros and digestifs which I genuinely enjoy sipping. Tongues are weird.
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My kids use the word “eccentric” in reference to me rather than weird. But I think I should get a weirdness multiplier score because I appear to be completely square, of the western big hat and mustache archetype.
Spent 8 years living as nudists on a sailboat.
Born with no fear of heights or confined spaces.
Showtunes. Listening to and singing of, including some Bollywood, points for singing while performing typical cowboy-type activities.
I tend to get attacked by wild animals way more frequently than other people, including allegedly docile fish, animals, and birds.
also, extra points for:
unexpected religion
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I daydream about writing a manifesto.
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I’d love to spend an evening with the “I don’t like bitterness” people and a bunch of miracle berries.
The look on your faces would be priceless!
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Give Benedictine a go.
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when I lived in Knoxville, the local “famous nut”–whom I had seen around without any interaction for many years–handed me a hand-written note in the gas station parking lot one day. It was seemingly specifically written to me personally, although it was very fractured and difficult to understand. It occupied a space of honor on my refrigerator for many years.[quote=“AcerPlatanoides, post:53, topic:92330”]
I find that the right company is electrifying, and the wrong company intoxicating. The latter exhausts me.
[/quote]
thisthisthis. I get overstimulated in crowds/noise/bright light. Which is weird, because I used to be a semi-pro DJ and went to clubs and rock shows all the time. To your point, I loved the community, but it exhausted me. I didn’t realize it, though. I thought being tired all the time was normal. Drinking and smoking weed numbed it but I didn’t understand that at the time, I just thought I was partying like everyone else (at least partially true.) I honestly think I would’ve been a better academic achiever if I had fucked myself up at school; being bombarded with all the people negated any learning I might have been receptive to. I had to take involuntary naps in class a lot.
Anyway, I’ve always identified as a weirdo notwithstanding that I’m a straight, white, American male. Growing up, I was the shy, sensitive guy. As I got more socially acclimated, I learned to discard some of that, at least outwardly. But even internally, I realized that I was also needlessly holding myself back.
I used to be an outlier in the way I dressed and cut/dyed my hair. Now, I suppose I’m more normal but only because I like the challenge of dressing well; I’ve been-there-done-that doing shocking things. That’s easy. Also, I’m old now.
I notice that at work, I am a lot more meticulous and process-oriented versus result-oriented than everyone else. I dislike the absence of professional rigor involved in the following statement, but I’m pretty sure the reason for my process-oriented viewpoint is because I’m on the autistic spectrum on some level, which @jsroberts helped me realize in[ a thread last year.] (A thread about autists) Making eye-contact has always been a forced thing, reserved for special or intimate moments, and only because it is expected of me. But now I don’t mind to do it when I feel the recipient is legitimate.
It is seemingly in vogue now, at least where I live, but I used to be the only person I knew that rode a bike everywhere. I still do, but I seldom go anywhere anymore : (
My speech switches from yankee to southern to academic to common and from white to ebonics within the same sentence mostly all the time. I just use le mot juste.
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This thread has made me hum this song all day, even on the way to the barber shop.
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Same here. I’m in the weird position that there are lots of things that fascinate me that are closely connected to things I really don’t like. For example, I find ASPD really interesting, but I don’t get any sort of grotesque enjoyment from hearing about what those people do. People talk about the problem of evil from a religious perspective – why would a loving god allow such evil to exist? but I’m more interested in it from a sociological and psychological perspective. What makes someone want to do this kind of stuff? How can you have societies that are incredibly violent at one point, then peaceful a few decades later, or societies with similar demographics that have very different crime rates? Logically, there are some people who would commit horrific crimes in one setting, but in another they would actually just be the good neighbour you don’t see much.
My interest really has very little to do with the kind of sensationalist accounts of the crimes, but more to do with how people learn about values, and what the outliers can teach us about the rest of us. There’s the idea that these people are acting alone and just crazy, but often they direct their violence at people who are generally seen as worth less in society (even if we don’t like to admit that). They can often also be expressions of frustration and signs of inequality that many other people feel, but don’t act on.
Despite this interest in manipulative people, it’s probably a very good thing that pretty much everyone close to me has been honest and non-manipulative throughout my life – I have the tendency to be very socially naive and generally assume that people around me are honest and trustworthy. I don’t process things very well in real time, so I have been cheated in minor issues quite a bit (sometimes when I knew they were being manipulative). My psychiatric report called me “clueless and helpless” – I don’t think I’m quite that bad, but It’s a bit worrying that this is the impression I can give.
I also find language, culture and communication very interesting, although I’m really not very sociable at all. In fact, in almost two years I think I’ve only spent time socially with people I don’t know through family on eight occasions – three times with BB friends, two coffee mornings at school, one translator meetup and twice when I stayed overnight with some couchsurfing hosts. One of my closest friends lives in Hamburg, and I last saw him in May 2015. I also like discussing theology, but I’m an atheist and I can’t stand sitting through a sermon. One time I was asked whether I wanted to lead a Bible study, and I had to say that I just enjoy talking about the concepts – I don’t actually believe them.
It’s never been in an evangelistic way for me; I just like discussing the Bible, including the extended universe and fanfiction. It wasn’t much better when I was a Christian – I was a missionary who didn’t want to convert anyone, I just wanted to learn about how they saw the world.
(BTW, I really don’t think the examples of religious people he gave were particularly nerdy – what kind of religious nerd hasn’t actually read the book they go on about and isn’t conversant on church history or even the culture surrounding the Bible, except where they’re trying to support an argument they’ve been fed by someone else?)
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We don’t have enough containers for color sorting. 
I simply see no hope of ever assembling the Millennium Falcon again if the dang things aren’t sorted by shape.
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When I was younger I did a fair amount of surveying in wooded areas. I often went to work with that question in my head, but I didn’t find anything much to like about it. Rousted a homeless guy once, and probably scared him half to death in the process, but that’s as close as I’ve gotten. And I’m glad for that.
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Alright then. I’ll get a few entered in here.
- I have trouble with calendars and dates. I didn’t learn the order of the months until college some time, and I still can’t tell you when most holidays are (minus, of course, the ones that have the date in the name…).
- I’m introverted, and I once did a job (for 10 years!) that required me to perform in front of an audience for 7 hours a day, every week day. I was tired a lot.
- I have hitchhikers thumbs, too. And my wrists are waif-ish. Like, my 8 year old kid might have larger diameter wrists than me. And all the metatarsals in my feet are fused (minus those in my big toes). My left shoulder dislocates all the time (and has since I was a kid), and my sternum now dislocates pretty often (as the result of a bike wreck a few years ago).
- My blood is O-, if you ever need some.
- My eyes are green.
- I’m allergic to melatonin. It sends me into hypothermia land.
- I compulsively learn new skills. Ideally, these are things for which I have absolutely no frame of reference- so I took up Fly Fishing a while ago, without ever having touched a fly rod before.
- I have a hard time with rules and conventions. If I’m presented with a problem to solve, I find it very, very difficult to solve it without ignoring established rules and conventions- I want to solve the best way possible, and if I see little/no rational for a convention, I’m apt to ignore it. This
canis oftenbeawkward.
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How far are you from Detroit, again? There’s only 4-5% of us planet wide. I like to keep tabs on as many with my blood type as possible.
That could well be it! I’m kinda the opposite. I like tonic water, all by itself. I can’t ever seem to get enough lime (the citrus kind) in my life. Yet I’m not a big fan of India Pale Ales. 
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• I am prone to visual migraines, which scared the poo out of me when they first occurred. The entire center of my vision goes blind and the sides are filled with dazzling rainbow-colored fractals for about fifteen minutes. There’s no pain involved, just visual weirdness. They sometimes happen if I eat a bunch of wasabi peas.
• I can vibrate my eyeballs rapidly. It’s a fun party trick. Hopefully not related to visual migraines.
• I have a silly love of condiments and very much enjoy trying to discover what condiment will be the ideal enhancement to the food I’m eating. My fridge is like half food, half mustards.
• I didn’t eat a steak until I was in my 30s, and didn’t see what all the fuss was about. To this day, I’ll eat them if one is served to me, and they can be quite tasty, but I’d rather eat a nice curry. Or some brussels sprouts.
• I enjoy pickled herring, sardines, smoked salmon, and other ‘fishy’ fish.
• I’m in an oddball relationship, but my sexuality is aaaaalll over the place.
• I have a large collection of children’s books that I loved as a kid and enjoy rereading them.
• I was raised a Methodist, experimented with Wicca in college, took lots of comparative religion courses, and these days have a vague sort of cobbled together spirituality informed by Taoism, animism, Fraggle Rock, naiveté, and stones.
• I took a bunch of tests as an elementary-school kid and overheard them tell my parents “His IQ is barely high enough to put him in the gifted classes, but let’s do it anyway and see how he does.” That sort of defined the way I thought about my brain for the rest of schooling.
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Oooh. That reminds me that I haven’t had breakfast. Unfortunately, I can’t have that… bummer.
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Do you live near a college campus? May and December are prime picking times and according to some you can find really good stuff.
And there’s that saying about one person’s trash. I found the outer case for a large screen TV once. I left it but was still seriously tempted to take it home so I could sit in it and do funny newscasts. In some groups I’d feel embarrassed admitting that. Here I figure everyone will just nod and understand.
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