Tuesday 21 August 2007

When no one's watching

I was sat at my desk at work today and I got irritated by tiny bits of grit on my mousemat. I'm not sure why my mousemat has the propensity for collecting these minute pieces of detritus, or indeed where they come from, but I dislike the feeling of them under my fingers as I run my mouse around the mat. I got so annoyed in fact, that I picked up the mat and proceeded to beat it against the corner of my desk in an attempt to get rid of them.

Suddenly it occurred to me that if anyone had been passing by my window at that point I would have looked completely mad, like Basil Fawlty when he beat his car with a branch. Why would you beat up a mousemat? Looney.

This got me thinking about other things I do when no one is watching, (no, not THAT!) and I realised I have a tendency to do all sorts of strange little things. I'm sure most people do, in fact I'm certain of it as I had a discussion with my housemates about this sort of thing a while back. I forget what their little idiosyncrasies were, but it was comforting to know that they had them.

Some of mine are perfectly normal, like dancing in the kitchen while doing the washing up (I have my Ipod playing, so that's pretty normal,) but I do other stuff too, like practice martial arts moves, (again not too wierd, especially since I actually do martial arts,) but also just random things that amuse me or make me laugh... I can't think of any examples at the moment, but when I do I'll come back and edit them in. Oh - like making up silly songs on the spot, usually containing a large splash of profanity, (and sometimes only using swear words,) which makes me chuckle to myself. Other times I practice skateboard moves, without the board. (Again I do skateboard, so not entirely nuts.)

One thing I like to do, (when circumstances permit,) is while driving alone, at night and when it's snowing. I imagine that the snow flakes coming toward the windscreen are really stars and that I'm in some sort of space fighter ship, travelling along at incredible speeds so the stars streak past.

My point is, if everyone does this sort of stuff, why can't we do it in front of each other? With some close friends you can display some of this behaviour - a friend of mine is amazing at making up silly songs on the spot, about whatever is in front of him at the time, be it a drink, his cats or whatever but they are always funny and sometimes his wife joins in and they end up doing a duet - never fails to make me laugh.

It seems to me that our fear of others' perceptions of us is a much bigger motivating factor in our behaviour than I had previously realised. On the whole I don't think of myself as a person who worries a lot about what other people think, but I keep these things to myself, so perhaps societal pressure exerts on me in more subtle ways than I realised. Like for example if I see a person walking down the street alone smiling to themselves, it makes me smile, but if that person is walking alone and talking out loud and there is no mobile or bluetooth headset present, then I tend to think they're a little strange but I have on many occasions verbalised my thoughts while alone. (My housemate does it a lot, to the point where I have stopped asking if she's talking to me and just wait to see if the conversation requires my input.)

I think that if we could get past the embarrasment of the situation, it would help foster bonds between people. Imagine seeing someone doing something wierd or silly that you do in private and rather than ridiculing them for it, (we've all caught someone doing something and given them the, 'oookaaay' raised-eyebrow look, and also been on the other end of it,) instead we said, 'Oh I do that too!' or admit to doing something similar. Imagine the feeling of relief that person would feel and the instant bond it would create between you. It could be that the thing that ends up uniting humanity is our admission that we're all at least a bit wierd...

So, what do you do when no one else is watching?

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