wtf wednesdays : weird quirks

Okay so I added a fun weekly alliteration challenge just to spice up these posts. Spoiler alert: based on my current directionless routine it's gonna get real boring real fast up in here so why the heck not throw in some listicles.

This Wednesday's wtf is weird quirks. Today I got chatting with my parents (Yes. I live in my parents' house. Where else could I feasibly live given my awful career choice...) and some strange stuff I did as a kid came up. I have a lot of weird character traits in general that tend to incur a lot of raised eyebrows with most people. However. If you're reading this you are not most people (there's actually a 90% chance you are one person *cough cough* hi future me) so please help me prove that I am not alone. Unless you're me reading this, in which case, go read someone else, ya self-centered weirdo.

For real, though. I'm not pretending to be an anomaly here for clout. I'm seriously convinced there are others out there who do these same things, but I do not socialize on purpose often so the chances of me encountering a fellow weird face-to-face are very slim. Not that encountering a fellow weird over a teeny tiny TMI blog post is any more likely, but hey, one can always imagine their shout into the void is actually heard.

Without further ado, let's get the listicle rolling. Watch, I'll even get some header action in here.

Five weird quirks you may experience if you're...weird

Looks like the key term this Wednesday is weird. Look ma! I did an SEO all by myself!

1. Flicker vertigo

Yeah this one actually has a legit name. It's that thing that happens where you suddenly don't know who you are or where you are or when you are when a strobe light is flashing. It doesn't even have to be a proper strobe. Sun chopping through the trees while you're driving is a brutal one. Also police and ambulance lights. One time my sister took a picture of me with a really bright flash and I traveled through the multi-verse for a sec. It has something to do with brain waves, I think. And it's not the same thing as epilepsy. Just a really weird excuse for you to ask someone else to drive at sunset (or else pray to sweet Joey the Sea Otter that you don't lose brain power as you commute into your evening shift at Disneyland...)

According to the internet, sun glancing off of helicopter blades causes it, too—which has created some terrifying problems for unsuspecting helicopter pilots.

2. Severe lack of spatial/geographical awareness

I don't mean not knowing where countries are on the world map. That's just being an American. I'm talking about not knowing where you are in the context of your own local geography. As in, completely panicking when your phone dies while your GPS is on because you can't navigate for shit without it. On routes you've already traversed before. Many times.

I'll give you some examples. As a child, our cafeteria bathroom was also the gym locker room. It had two entrances. One in a hallway next to the cafeteria. One in the gym. Without fail, if I went to the bathroom during lunch, I would immediately get lost in the bathroom, stumble my way out into the gym, stumble my way out the gym (thank god there was only one obvious exit), then get turned around in some side hallway so badly I would start crying until a teacher found me and walked me back down the STRAIGHT path from the gym to the cafeteria again.

I've gotten lost driving to the dentist I've gone to my whole life. When I moved away from my hometown and came back, I needed a GPS to find the grocery store again. One time in middle school, I started following a kid who I thought was my neighbor home only to realize he was not, in fact, my neighbor and we were not, in fact, heading toward home when he suddenly ran inside a house I didn't recognize (likely terrified by the girl stalking him). Which gets me into my next weird quirk:

3. Face blindness

This one gets me in trouble a lot. Unless I grew up with you or have seen you on a regular basis for at least a few months, there is a good chance I won't recognize you if you change your hair. Fortunately, most people don't change their hair that often. But there was this one time I was meeting up with a new acquaintance at a concert and I completely walked past her because her hair was in a top knot instead of the short bob it had been in when we originally met. That was embarrassing.

I also easily mix people up. If you don't have any consistent, noteworthy features (ie; nose ring, blue hair, beauty mark etc.), I will likely confuse you with someone who has the same hair, body type, and skin tone as you. I worked in a building an entire year before realizing two skinny hipster dudes with glasses were not the same dude. Once I walked into a party in college and waved excitedly at a girl with the same long brown hair and perky expression as the girl I actually knew. I only realized it wasn't her when the stranger girl made a very perplexed face at me... When Aubrey Plaza died her hair blonde and wore red lipstick I legitimately thought she was Lady Gaga in an interview. How.

4. You type out what people are saying on an imaginary keyboard

It's not that what they're saying is boring. It's just that sometimes the fingers want to type the dialogue the ears hear. Even though there is no keyboard around, no need to do so, and it certainly does not help you hear what anyone is saying better...

5. Squishing that ball thing where your eyelid meets your tear duct gives you unholy pleasure

I don't even have much more to say about this. I don't know why no one I've talked to has ever done this compulsively, but it can be purely orgasmic if your sinuses are clogged so I can't imagine I'm alone here.

All right this was supposed to be shorter so maybe I'm getting worse at concision in exchange for brevity. Took me an hour to write all this. I'm not editing (much) today. Hence, why the last two points are absolute nubs compared to the first three. Honestly, they should just be taken out and the section should be renamed "Three weird quirks" instead of "Five" but I'm just going to write out the edits now apparently instead of actually doing them. Are any of these even quirks? Idk. It's late.

Until next time, weirds.