Observing Human Habits

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Observing Human Habits

People and their strange habits. Where does this strange behavior come from? During this past week, I was able to observe many of my peers. From this, I noticed some unusual habits of theirs.

While sitting in my speech class at Harbor College, I watched my classmates give introductory speeches in front of the class. Some of the students were swaying back and forth-, which made it difficult to view them. A few of them were tapping their fingers on the podium. As I can recall, one female continuously tapped her long nails on the table (to me this became a nuisance). What I noticed most was that many of them could not keep still-only 5 people out of the 30 produced smooth speeches, those that were confident and had previous experience. From my observation, it was evident that they were nervous and scared.

Last Saturday, I went out with a group of friends for dinner. While drinking a bottle of Corona, my attention was shifted to my close friend, Kenny. I caught Kenny tapping his mug of beer 3 consecutive times with his index finger before taking a drink. A few minutes surpassed and he repeated this act again. I also looked at my watch to discover that this habit of his occurred every 3 minutes. I was astounded. Kenny was not only tapping his beer but also repeated this action at the same time span. I wanted to question Kenny about this enigmatic tendency except I was afraid of offending him. Several nights later, I decided to question him about this unusual doing. Kenny had told me, "It's for good luck. My lucky number is 3 and so I must tap everything in my hand 3 times." Kenny believed it would bring him good luck, well so far nothing bad has happened to him.

My last observation took place the next day after the outing with Kenny. I invited a friend of mine to my house to watch a football game. While watching the Green Bay Packers and Denver Broncos play against each other, I caught sight of my friend, Paul, shaking his left leg while sitting on the sofa. Even when Paul and I conversed, he continued shaking his leg. I annoyingly asked him to keep his leg still- although, he continued to do so without realizing it. That is one of my pet peeves.

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