Quirks.

I love quirks. There's just something so uniquely awesome about them and I feel about 100x closer to a person if I know 1 or 2 or 25 of their quirks. It's comforting to know that everybody has them and I, for one, am extremely proud of my quirks. I really think they're something to celebrate and I can honestly tell you that quirks are what make me truly adore people. They're like the sprinkles on top of a cupcake, or something. The cupcake's good, but the sprinkles just make it that much better.

7 Quirks:

1. I love to sing. I sing in the car, in my room, in the shower, and I especially love singing on my way up and down the stairwell of my dorm because it's so very echo-y. And I have the habit of grabbing whatever might be lying around (i.e., a pencil, an i-pod, a book, a cell phone, a remote control, but rarely a hairbrush) and using it as a microphone. It is so lame, but I do it at least once a day, if not more often than that. I guess there's something liberating about it because I really cannot help myself.

2. I am painfully quiet in my classes. I dread classes that have a participation grade because there's something so scary about speaking in a large group of unfamiliar people. It's not even like I think that my opinions aren't valuable — I know they are — but for some reason my palms get all sweaty and my heart starts racing when I know I have to speak up. My English classes often require us to break into small groups of 3 or 4 students and my peers are always shocked at how outgoing I am in those small groups. I don't know why I'm so quiet in classroom settings and I've tried to 'cure' myself so many times by just pumping myself up to participate, but nothing's worked.

3. I am a Parmesan cheese junky. I load it on pizza, spaghetti, salads — anything that may taste remotely good with Parmesan, you better believe I add it. And it's weird because it's not so much that grated Parmesan has a whole lot of flavor. As a matter of fact, I really don't think it has much flavor at all, but apparently that doesn't bother me because I'm pretty sure my pizza slice has more Parmesan on it than anything else.

4. I cannot stand butterflies. Real life butterflies are great, but any kind of butterfly on clothing items, accessories, purses, furniture, fabric, etc., bother me. And not just kind of bother me, — really, REALLY bother me. I don't even consider purchasing items with any kind of butterfly-like design. I didn't always dislike butterflies. I was never in love with them, or anything, but I'm pretty sure my intense dislike for butterflies started in 6th grade. I can't really pinpoint the reason, but since then I have steered very clear from them. Of course, butterflies in nature are beautiful and I adore them, but reproductions of butterflies? No thanks.

5. I LOVE freckles. I get a light speckling across the bridge of my nose in the summertime and it never fails to make me happy. I just think there's something so whimsical about freckles and I am so envious of girls (or guys) who are covered in them. I've always kind of enjoyed my randomly appearing freckles, but there's something really endearing about a face full of them.

6. I feel like this is going to be hard to explain, but you know how at fast food restaurants the lids have special 'buttons' the employees press down so that they can specify what kind of drink is in the cup? (Pretend that makes sense). If I go to McDonald's or Chick-Fil-A or any other random fast food restaurant, I ALWAYS press every single 'button' down. I've been doing it for years. I think there's something really fulfilling about it. I love it. So much.

7. I hate breaking the binding of a library book (and will never, ever do it!), but I love when the binding is already broken. I feel kind of guilty doing it myself, but if it's already done, I enjoy it so much. There's something comforting about a broken binding. I guess I just like the idea that someone else has read the book and worn it in. It just makes me feel happy. It's kind of like the last person who read the book and I have a secret together. I don't know, there's just something kind of magical about the whole library thing. It just feels so personal. Like, everyone who has ever read that particular copy of that particular book is connected, or something. Kind of silly, but really, really wonderful to think about.

xo, R.