Day 31

Wow! My last day of the 31-day blog challenge! Today, I am sharing a couple of my weird quirks.

Both of these particular quirks began when I was a child. I mean when I was in grade school or, if you prefer, elementary school.

I do not understand why, but this first quirk has to do with the stuffing in seats, couches, anything with cotton filling. What bothers me about it is when the material covering it begins to tear.

If you do not cover it right away, it starts to get dirty. Once it gets dirty, I can not tolerate looking at it. I want to upchuck my stomach contents.

My mother had a couch given to her when I was a teenager. We needed a sofa, but we had no money to buy one. So she took some old sheets and blankets to cover it and the stuffing sticking out. She had no idea the stuffing bothered me. I would not sit on that sofa or look at it. In my mind, I could still see that old dirty filling, and it bothered me badly.

I never told my mother how I felt about that couch. It would have hurt her, and she was so happy and grateful to have it. The same thing happened when my father bought a used car for me as a graduation present. The seats had tears in them. The driver seat had big tears, and tears on the back of the back seat.

I was to drive that car from San Diego back home to Los Angeles. I put a worn pillow and blanket on the seat to cover the cotton filling. However, my challenge was to protect my back from touching the back of the seat. A more significant challenge was to keep the cover from slipping down when I got into the car.

You should have seen me sitting straight up. I refused to sit back for fear the blanket would come loose and fall. I drove like that for two hours. I was never so glad to get home and out of that car. I did not drive the car again. I sold it to the first person who asked to buy it.

My second quirk started one day when I noticed how often the letter E appeared in sentences. I told myself, “I bet there are enough ‘E’s’ in a sentence to share with every word in the line of the sentence.

I know you are wondering what I mean. Let’s take this line, for example. There are nine ‘e’ in the line above. But there are 13 words in that line, therefore, there are not enough e’s for each word. Nor of another letter to spread over the 13 words, so I move to the next line. I do this as I am reading. It has become a game. I have rules that I apply when doing this. However, I would need more time, and I am not sure I can do it without boring you to tears, figuring out what I do and why.

I have been at this since I was about nine or ten, and I still do it today as I read. It has become such a strong habit and would probably make reading less attractive if I did not play this game as I read.

You now know two of my quirks. I have others, but in the interest of time, I will stop here.

I have no idea what I will write tomorrow. Monday, I will write on a different subject for each workday. For example, Mondays might be self-love, Tuesdays could be on confidence. You get the idea. The weekends might be on something fun, and holidays would be how I feel about that holiday.

If you are a blogger and would like to contribute something, you are welcome to request to post with your name. However, I would have to read and approve it first. Thank you for sharing these days with me as I went through this 31-day blog challenge. It has been fun and brought back some great memories. Until tomorrow, stay safe, and keep the faith.