What a Purl!
I would hate to criticize my mother in law in a public forum but sometimes you just have to tell it how it is.
I have traced it back to her!
I don’t know why I didn’t connect the dots before. You see, she is solely responsible for the twiddle gene. Her son has it and so do all his children. I on the other hand, not being related by blood, am free of the twiddle gene. I often think that if had the twiddle gene too, then it wouldn’t be quite so annoying. As it is, I don’t, so it is, annoying that is to say.
They all do it, the foot tapping, hair twiddling, flicky fingers, nibbling and the like. These are the kinds of people who make teachers yell, ‘sit on your hands!’ More unfortunate types are twacked with a ruler.
Then there are the ear lobe pullers, the people who suck air through their teeth and the women and girls who do that thing with long hair that has no name but ought to have one.
Who can ignore the chin rubbers and beard strokers? I’m very agin the jostling change in your pocket types. I cannot stand the rhythmical drumming of fingertips on the table top boffins, the fluff pluckers and the throat clearers. The rockers are pretty annoying too, swaying forwards onto tippy toes and then rolling back onto heels guys, gearing up for speech. I’m convinced that Restless Leg Syndrome should fit in there somewhere.
Due to my never ending thirst for knowledge, I have conducted scientifically controlled experiment to determine the cause of these behaviours. 9 times out of ten, when you ask someone ‘why are you doing that incredibly annoying thing?’ the most common response is ‘what? or I’m not doing anything!’ Bizarre as it may seem, they are oblivious to their behaviour and more importantly, it’s effect on their audience.
They’re all variations on a theme, be they displacement activities, coping mechanisms or an aid to concentration. No matter how you choose to label them, they all fall into the chasmic category of annoying. If you are unfortunate enough to belong to a family of twiddlers, what might you do to relieve the stress of such an existence, lighten the burden? This is a question I have often asked myself. No amount of kooshes and fiddlesticks will placate them.
I asked myself this question again, as I waited seven minutes outside the school for the boys. My daughter sat in the back seat with her mild fever and a twiddling fingers. The offensive digits played with the electronic window button, up and down, and up and down…..for 420 excruciating seconds. I tried to distract her with conversation but she never missed a beat. I tried and work out what it was that was so annoying? Was it the noise? Not an offensive noise really and quite quiet. Repetitive but rhythmical. Would it have be more annoying if she’d did missed a beat. Why?
I should have acted sooner, probably about twenty years ago.
Back then, we’d sit on the sofa together, the Chesterfield. We’d talk about the future, or rather, I’d talk and he’d twiddle. As the months rolled on, the sofa grew bald, buttonless and saggy. Sadly, the male of the species was fatally flawed. If only I paid more attention. If only I’d known that we would produce a whole twoop of twiddlers to taunt me. As I said my wedding vows I sealed my own fate. As we packed to move out to the States, the sofa was just so much collateral damage. Oh woe is me, cursed by this twiddle riddle, pure innocent that I am.
Now where did I leave my knitting?
Clickety click!
Stumble it!
May 28th, 2008 at 4:32 am
I crunch ice cubes. This comes and goes, as I have been told it can be related to amemia- how, I have no clue….
May 28th, 2008 at 5:30 am
Oh boy do I have twiddlers (I like this term). My hubby can’t stand still when he is on the phone, pacing from room to room and our son is the master twiddler, from chewing any inanimate object that looks tasty, to picking the skin of his callus on his hand to…oh the list goes on. Bless you! I have to confess, I am a chewing gum snapper (little bubbles snapped in between teeth,discreetly but noisy)! There, I said it.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:36 am
i’m a twiddler too. my mother used to call my “fingers magoo” when i was a kid because of my tendency to pick labels of jars and magazines.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:56 am
That picture is priceless…. I cruch ice cubes like the person posted above. I am not certain what specific offense I would pinpoint with my kids… I can’t get past the same phrase over and over again. All day long.
May 28th, 2008 at 6:12 am
Oh this is me! Today in a meeting I noticed I was slipping the heel of my shoe on and off and on and off… I think I was the last to notice, although everyone else was too polite to launch themselves over the boardroom table and KILL ME DEAD.
May 28th, 2008 at 6:20 am
We come from a long line of twiddlers. My poor kids get it from BOTH SIDES.
May 28th, 2008 at 6:22 am
I am a hair twister. I pull and twist and fiddle with my hair all the time. Pony tails are never left alone, they are always being twisted around my finger, in and out of a bun, wrapped around my wrist. I would go through withdrawls without it.
May 28th, 2008 at 9:27 am
In my gene pool - we can’t stand the twiddlers. We can’t even stand people who eat loudly, so mealtimes are a bit of a strain, especially for newcomers. My husband’s gene pool consists of “if I want something to happen, I will just say it over and over again until it becomes so”. In other words, a war of attrition. Even my three kids do it, but I’m now on to them all and it’s a one-woman campaign!
May 28th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Those are all stims. The difference is that some of them are acceptable ones and some are not. Me, I’m a rocker, click my teeth together, fidgeter.
May 28th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
You need to get them involved in activities that require the hands to be covered in unspeakable goopieness. Finger paints, greasy machinery, hand kneeding of dough, mud pies, making clay pottery by hand. I am sure that there are others. That might have to become a desesitization project all by itself.
May 28th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
As a child, people were concerned I was a freak: I was one of those kids who could sit perfectly still and quiet for hours on end.
I am, likewise, cursed with a whole house full of twiddlers. I’m unsure which is worse: the physical assault of being continually touched, pushed, prodded, tapped, rubbed, and nibbled — or the aural assault of the constant mumbling, humming, thrumming, tapping, jabbering, squealing, and bickering.
And yes, I cannot watch TV without a crossstitch to work, a cat to stroke and scratch, or a project to manage. I am never idle. But I am just about ALWAYS still. Hard to reduce yourself to the mound of jello that I’ve become without a great deal of being very still.
May 31st, 2008 at 4:29 pm
my son’s school has a box of fiddlies at the front of each class for just such a purpose. when i look back at my desk in my old office, it had a great many pointless things including clothes pegs that i would fix onto the joints of my fingers on bad days…