Which daily habit do you find bizarre in other people?
I find it very strange when people wear footwear in their own house. It’s an eccentricity I can’t explain. At home, I’m always in a dress and barefoot.
N, on the other hand, always wears his Special Slippers at home.
Pink slippers get a pass. Any other color, nope. 😀
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Skin care routines.
I remember being completely baffled the first time I realized that huge numbers of women blow at least an hour every day applying, removing, moisturizing, and doing other things to their faces, using dozens of potions in small containers that crowd every horizontal surface of their bathrooms (does this solve the mystery of the double bathroom sink?) (OMG how much does all that stuff cost?), in order to look… exactly their own ages.
Can’t even imagine.
-ethyl
Same here, the only skin care product I use is Noxema in those big blue tubs. My skin is all right, people say I look younger than I am
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The most lovely older lady I ever knew let me in on her skin care routine: scrub gently with water. Use a little cocoa butter in the winter. She never wore makeup (and why would she?).
If it was good enough for her, I feel totally justified in not doing any more than that. That’s half an hour in the evening I could be reading!
-ethyl
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Smoking a cigarette after or with coffee in the morning. I understand chain smoking, but I find cigarette smoke in the morning absolutely disgusting. I am witnessing this live, and after all these years I am still baffled.
Ol.
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Both coffee and cigarettes are a laxative. If you see someone adding a bran muffin to that routine…
Safer and more pleasant than chronic long-term use of any of the various effective OTC drugs marketed for that purpose. The family notes that my grandfather’s morning constitutional involved disappearing into the bathroom for half an hour with a cigarette and a newspaper.
-ethyl
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This is fascinating. I had absolutely no idea.
I do know why alcohol demands a cigarette and vice versa. Alcohol brings blood pressure down while cigarettes elevate it. By combining the two, you can adjust your blood pressure to the perfectly pleasing pitch.
But I didn’t know about the laxative effect in combination with coffee.
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I never wear shoes if I can avoid it, and certainly never in my own house. When it’s cold I wear slippers and when it’s warm I wear flip flops. My husband, by contrast, puts his shoes on first thing in the morning and takes them off last thing at night — even in sweltering hot weather. He’s done it all his life. It’s just one of the many things about him that I will probably never understand.
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You all must not have slippery staircases in your houses. After painfully falling three times on the stairs (fortunately the worst that happened to me were big bruises with some soft tissue pain, but I do not care to repeat the experience), I am now a convert and wear “inside” shoes inside the house. They cannot be slippers, but real shoes that stay on your feet. Much safer.
Unfortunately, I have an ugly evil carpeting on my stairs that I dream of tearing out. But with home repair prices being what they are, this is an impossible dream.
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“people wear footwear in their own house”
As a kid I wore shoes (even sandals) as little as possible and the bottom of my feet were like shoe leather.
Now I usually wear sandals inside at home (sometimes just house socks).
I cannot fathom people who wear outside shoes indoors…. (and yes I have slippers for guests to change into, a custom that seems emminently sensible).
I’m mostly a live and let live sort, but some things seem beyond the pale.
Smoking while eating…
Not returning shopping carts…
Wearing ear buds in public (hello, situation awareness!)
Motorcycles (dont get the point most of the time)
Probably more but that’s a start.
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I really hate it when I’m talking to somebody and they whip out their phone without any warning and start poking it. It’s so weird and rude.
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I totally leave my shopping cart out. I try to park next to the corral whenever possible so it’s handy to return, but I have kids, I shop at the ghetto Walmart, and the #1 goal is to get groceries and kids loaded into the car and leave as quickly as possible, so as not to spend extra time in that risky parking-lot transitional space. No way in hell am I leaving the kids in the car while I return the cart. This is zombieland. No problem letting the burly dude who gets paid to collect those, get it.
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I’d never judge a parent for not returning the cart. And I don’t like the judgmental pricks who do. If you are alone, then yes, it’s your duty as a decent person to return the cart. But with kids, your duty is always to the kids first.
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I have a strict policy of shoes being left at the door. I do make exceptions for people like my grandma used to be, where she wasn’t really able to get her shoes on or off without extensive preparations.
I wear socks indoors, mostly so I don’t track anything onto my bed as I take my socks off before getting into it.
People where I live are nasty, they have no problem spitting on sidewalks, roads, etc. Or pouring out their drinks, not on the grass, but just on the roadway, sidewalk, wherever. And on and on and on. I don’t want any of that in my house, much less on my feet and then on my sheets. So shoes stay at the door where they belong.
I respect everybody’s shoe policy in their own house, whatever it is.
What I don’t respect is when people invite you over and don’t warn you they have dogs. Unless they are planning to keep the dogs in the backyard the entire time, it’s rude and inconsiderate not to warn people. The same goes for pet rats. I once almost had a coronary when I discovered somebody’s pet rat sitting right next to me on the back of a sofa.
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I went shopping today and was helping my child into the car. Suddenly I noticed something is poking us. It turned out to be a big dog sticking his head out of the window of the car that was parked beside us. I almost got a heart attack. Fortunately he didn’t bark or bite but i was not expecting to be poked by an animal randomly in a parking lot.
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I would have had the same reaction. When you are concentrating on your child, you are so absorbed by it that this kind of thing is really shocking.
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>”when people invite you over and don’t warn you they have dogs”
What exactly is the problem with a well-trained, well-behaved house pet like a dog or a cat roaming around the house that a guest has to be forewarned about? (If you’re allergic to such animals you should tell your host when you’re invited to visit.)
Years ago when I owned a harmless pet snake that I kept in an aquarium in the kitchen, I never forewarned any guests. and nobody seemed to care.
Dreidel
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A cat is perfectly fine. And a snake in an aquarium is, too. But “well-behaved” dogs will invariably mess up a person’s outfit and tights. They will slobber on a person. They will put paws on her. They’ll scare her child. They’ll make conversation impossible by loud barking and noisy running around. They’ll spoil a person’s appetite with heavy breathing and horrible mouth stench.
All one asks is to be given the option not to subject oneself to all this extraordinary joy.
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College roommate had a python in an aquarium.
Got up early one morning, dressed for work, zombied into the kitchen… python was on the countertop. Nope.
Nope. Nope. Nope.
Roomie, come get your friend from the kitchen.
I am all for reptiles in their natural habitat. They are remarkably good at getting out of containers.
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Everybody who loves dogs thinks they have a “well behaved” dog, mostly forgetting that people who don’t like or own dogs, are not acclimated to completely friendly and normal dog behaviors such as butt-sniffing, wiping a cold wet dog nose on your skin, licking hands (same tongue they just licked their own butt with, yay), total lack of regard for personal space, dog sitting in corner masturbating while everybody is trying to chitchat, etc.
Everybody has a different definition of “well behaved” when it comes to dogs.
Plus, you know, the part where they shed fur on everything they touch, lick random things, and go about making butthole contact with all the floors, furniture, bedding, etc.
Totes OK if it’s your dog, and I’ve had a dog (the very best dog) and been fine with it, so not just talking trash here. But if it’s my dog, I know when it was last bathed, that we’ve kept up with de-worming, that it doesn’t have fleas, and what to expect: no surprises. I also know the dog loves to find 3-days-dead turtles and roll in the corpse funk like it’s chanel #5, occasionally eats poop, vomits on the rug now and then… When it’s MY dog, that’s just unfortunate stuff I deal with, and the reward is, I have a great dog that I love.
Not so OK if it’s someone else’s dog (with whom I do not enjoy loyalty, affection, etc), if you’re afraid of dogs, if you don’t have a dog and simply don’t like or are even completely neutral toward dogs. It’s not OK to go over to someone else’s house and demand that they keep their dog in a cage for your comfort, obviously, but dang, warn people ahead of time so they can opt out!
Watched a woman recently strolling through Walmart with a small dog in the store-provided shopping basket. Made mental note to remember that all groceries may have come into secondary contact with dog-butt, and act accordingly. Not cool, but I try to take free information and learn from it when it comes to me. This is a thing. Ew. But also: nothing I can do about it.
-ethyl
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YES. I feel very understood. The phrase “oh, she’s just playing” sends me into paroxysms of anger. What does it even supposed to mean?
I have a colleague, a large, burly man about 15 years younger than me. He comes with a comfort dog to every meeting. The dog is clearly very trained and quiet. But I have to confess that it’s weird. It’s just weird. If he were blind, I wouldn’t say a word. But it’s hard for me to feel good about other type of dog-needing ailments.
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I really appreciate well-trained service dogs. Have met people who had them for blindness, deafness, epilepsy. Cool.
The problem is that there are waaaay too many people who have no self-awareness about their pets (or just don’t care because they are psychos), and have delusional ideas that their own precious pooches *are* well-trained, well-socialized animals, when they are not. I have never had a good service dog so much as step toward me for a sniff.
Meanwhile, I met a guy on the train once with bandages over half his face, and started a conversation. He was on his way home from his Nth plastic surgery appointment. What happened to him? He was walking in the park, passed a guy with a “well-behaved and friendly” dog on a leash, asked for, and got, the OK to pet said dog, and that dog proceeded to rip half his face off. He was having his missing upper lip reconstructed when I met him.
So that also lives in my head now.
If you have a dog, then even if it’s the greatest most well-trained dog ever, you should keep in mind that *lots* of irresponsible dog-owners have poisoned the well and there are good reasons people shouldn’t have to take your word for it.
-ethyl
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We have a shoe shelf by the door, but so far no house shoes, which means in winter, when we don’t blast the heat enough to be comfy barefoot, shoes are worn in the house.
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When I had my current house constructed 28 years ago, I had wall-to-wall carpeting installed in every room except the kitchen and bathrooms, so I could comfortably walk around it bare-footed.
(I don’t ask my guests or maids to take off their shoes when they enter.)
Dreidel
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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