Creature of Habit

We are such creatures of habit and heaven forbid if one alters a well-established routine. It takes a long time and a great deal of frustration just to change the time of day when we take our medications.

It’s the mundane tasks that are entrenched in our psyche: when and how we brush our teeth, get to work, what direction the toilet paper rolls, when we feed the pets, and, oh yes, where we sit in church.

I grew up knowing people chose certain places to sit every Sunday, and if someone new mistakenly sat is a ‘reserved’spot, they were eyeballed and grumbled at, as the pastor preached about patience and forgiveness.

I’m not against having a favorite place, but it seems a bit boring to sit next to the same people all the time, or look at the same side of the minister’s face every week.

There are some good things about repetitive actions. I like not having to think about where the refrigerator is in the house. What if it were moved every two days? I’d be stumbling around the house trying to figure out if I had put it in the laundry room, or the second bedroom, or outside. That would be frustrating.

A few years ago I decided to see if I could change on which wrist I wore my watch. Took me a while to make the transition, and I got so I could wear it on either wrist. But, I became somewhat confused as to which wrist I had it on each day so I kept looking at both. Now I don’t wear one at all. My doglets are a picture of routine. I tell what time it is by their various insistences. I feed them once at 6:05 p.m. and that is meal time from now on. At 7:15 p.m. they are waiting at the door to go for a walk. If I don’t get the message, they sit and stare at me, and if that doesn’t get me moving, they pant very loudly, and one jumps in my lap to lick my nose. Maybe my next dog I will name Habit.

I will continue parting my hair on the same side, trying to find the same lipstick color I loved as a senior in high school, and listening to that rock ‘n roll music I bopped to in 1960.

But trying AI is like learning a foreign language where my tongue won’t twist in the direction necessary to make sounds that are recognizable. And please don’t push my patience attempting to teach me how to program my phone so it sends a message to myself in the future to buy boots for next winter.

Yep, those might be nice things to do, but my friends will tell me when a sale is going on or I’ll forget I need boots until I do. Who ever said change is good? Obviously their refrigerator is bolted to the floor.