why do we do the things we do?

A bunch of saturday nights ago my car wouldn’t start… I was talking to amy on the phone when it happened, and I had just been talking about how it was fixed… pretty funny and ironic… but the best part was… I got off the phone with amy and I opened the hood of the car…

Let’s get one thing straight… I know little about cars… in looking under the hood, I may be able to do a few things… check the oil, windshield wiper fluid, hook up jumper cables and to take notice of if the car was smoking or not… other than that, I’m not much use for anything… so why did I feel compelled to open the hood? Because I was supposed to… when the car is broken, you lift the hood… not because I know what’s wrong with it… but because that’s what I’m supposed to do…

It made me think of a story… a man and woman got married and the man noticed that when the woman made ham, she would always cut two inches off of each end, stick it in the pan and put it in the oven… this completely baffled him… he asked his wife why she did it, and she said, “i don’t know… it’s what my mother did…” the next time he saw his mother-in-law, he asked her about it…she said, “I don’t know… it’s what my mother did.” So he went to his wife’s grandmother and he asked her about it… she replied, “I had to cut the ends off the ham so it would fit in the pan…”

Okay, since I heard this story from someone else, I’m sure it’s been passed around a whole lot – so it’s not all that new – but the event and story make me stop and look at the things I do – the weird, quirky things… and the things passed on to me by tradition… the things that are familiar to me, but very unfamiliar and very abnormal… (thanks, guys… i’m an idiot – I know unnormal is not a word… I don’t have internet on my laptop, so no dictionary.com – I’m totally lost!!!)

Hmm… what are those things…
Okay – here’s one… old school Nintendo… if it won’t play, what do you do? You blow into the game… and if that doesn’t work, you lean down, blow into the machine… that magical air flow fixes the Nintendo and it works…

In my pastoral counseling class, our professor talked about how sometimes we do things subconsciously… like twirling hair or needing something to rub between our fingers – like a piece of fabric or a stuffed animal… how it could be linked to something from our past…

When I was a little girl, I sucked my thumb and had a pillow that I would hold… the pillow was made from dish towels sewn together and stuffed with pantyhose… I would rub the fringe of the pillow on my face while I sucked my thumb… I’ve heard this story many times… and lately, without realizing it until today, I have been wanting something soft… a little stuffed animal to hold when I’m stressed out… granted, I don’t think I’ll revert to sucking my thumb (let’s hope not)… but it’s a security thing…

I have a friend and she has a night-night… an old blanket that is in shreds… but she always sleeps with her night-night… one time, her night-night went missing (prank) and she was hysterical… she’s had it since she was a baby… I doubt that she thinks it’s weird that she still sleeps with her night-night at 22 years old… and even plans to take it on her honeymoon… but to many others, it’s odd…

so i'm sure there are a lot of other things, too... open to comments and suggestions... they make me laugh...