All of us have weird things.

My brother, up until he was 12 or so, did not want to be the last person to see something, so when we were in a car he would ask me to look at something after he did. Finally, I stopped doing him the favor to look.

I had a thing in college about never taking the elevator in the student center. EVER. I should walk up the five stories to get the exercise and save time. It was kind of like parking a car. I would rather park ten minutes away then look for twenty minutes for a spot five minutes away.

Till I hit puberty, I also had a thing about touching all of the designs and buttons in the elevator where I lived when I would go either up to or down from my grandma's apartment. I would usually jump on the railings in the elevator and then touch everything, as most the designs were near the ceiling, and around the perimeter of the elevator. I could also do a lot of jumping around the elevator instead of one jump and walking around the railings.

When I played baseball I did a thing where I would close one eye and make sure I rubbed it with my hand while it was closed, then do this with the other eye. I would also, with one eye closed, look with the other eye at all the poles that comprised the backstop. I would also do other things with one eye, like picture where I was going to hit the ball. There was no logic in these actions. It wasn't some psychological thing to get me going. I don't know what it was.

I learned recently that my sister has a thing about finish Harry Potter books in 24 hours. This seemes reasonable to me, better than my brother and my "things."

Should these things be called "things,"or is there a better word that all of them fall under. Some could be superstitions but certainly not all of them. And where do these things come from? Have psychologists studied this? Someone must have, right?