Does anyone else ever count things as they go through life? I not infrequently find myself counting random things as they happen. Generally things that happen in a relatively short time that are relatively periodic.
Stairs are a great example. Almost any time I am going up or down stairs I end up counting them. With stairs I do it so regularly that I can still tell you how many stairs there were at any place I have lived. The house I grew up in had 3 stairs up the hill in the yard, then 5 more to the door, 12 stairs down to the basement and 8 from the porch to the yard. My first apartment had I think 19 to the main level from the parking lot, and my last apartment had 4 and then 3 up to the ground level. My current house has 13 stairs each between the top, middle, and bottom levels although the top stairs are in a 5-4-4 configuration where the bottom are in a 6-4-3. At AVS a flight was 13 on the first half and 12 for the second to get between floors, with a double flight that was an additional 13-7 for the first floor.
It's not just stairs. I have extreme difficulty not counting train cars when I see one going by. I always used to count the number of flashes a do-not-walk sign gave before going solid, but since most of them have timers on them these days it's taken the fun out of it.
On the less periodic side, I always used to love counting coins back when I collected them and also when counting all my coins meant counting all my money. I still count poker chips at the table a whole lot more often than I need to.
Am I totally weird for doing this? I don't take it to the Will Ferrell in Stranger Than Fiction extreme (where he knows exactly how many of everything there is, and counts and does that many of the same thing every day), but I don't know that its normal. I think it might be a left over from back when I was musical and counted the rhythm of things all the time, but who knows.
In any case, if I'm not alone, what if anything else do other people count?
I count windows and doors. There are 11/22 windows in my apartment (depending on if I count panes as one or two windows). The main floor of my house growing up had 20...
ReplyDeleteI definitely don't think it's particularly normal, but I don't think there's anything too wrong with it either.
I count stairs, too. It's actually really weird that I didn't know this about you. I think it started as a defense mechanism, so I could handle stairs in the dark without that scary falling feeling you get when you miss one. And then it just became habit. I can't go up or down stairs without counting them anymore. I even counted them when I went to the Eiffel Tower.
ReplyDeleteI think what's weirder is that I have to start counting with my right foot. If I start going up or down a staircase with my left foot I actually get confused which occasionally leads to tripping.
This is not about counting, it is about your poll question on the side, but I don't know where else to comment. When I answer internet polls about myself I answer truthfully, if I am answering to support a friend or to vote on which something is most likely (sports, events, music, whatever...) then I pick the one I most want to win. I can't vote twice, so there you go.
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