General Chat

Are you a compulsive counter? When I sit here in the morning and look out the window I see a lot of starlings on the power lines. I just have to count them, which is not easy when they keep hopping around and flying off and coming back. I counted 25 this morning.

If I am in town whenever I walk somewhere I find myself counting the number of steps I am taking. Now that really annoys me, so I have to mix up the numbers "16,4, 92,21"and so on so that I forget what the score is and stop counting.

Does anybody else have CCO?

Do you also count the occupied seats in a theatre when you are waiting for a play or performance to start :-D

More sadly I then try to work out the income from the audience :-(

Ummmm.......no.

The nearest I get to counting my steps is realising I'm walking to the rhythm of a song, so I have that going through my head! :-|

Compulsive counting must be quite annoying and time wasting!

Says she who can sit for hours with a 'blank' mind - I believe some call it 'meditation'.
Those who have to 'strike a pose' call it Yoga :-D

I used to count steps when walking to work, but that was to ensure that I was going by the shortest route (in the days before GoogleEarth).

These days if I go to a church service I can't resist totaling the numbers of the hymns and finding the average. Sadly my mental arithmetic doesn't extend to calculating the standard deviation. :-)

I think all of us have an affinity with numbers - I know I do - 9 is quite significant for me

Years ago when I had too much time on my hands I coded the alphabet A,B2, C3 etc
Well I started grouping the letter numbers into sets of 9 (as in 1-9)

When you get to Z it had to be an 8 as there are 26 letters in the alphabet. This didn't seem quite right to me.... gave it some thought.
The letter W is as it says double U so there are 27 letters in the alphabet.
This way you can have three nines, which looked a whole lot tidier.
But code can of course mean whatever you want, which is often the case.

Well you did ask Huia :-D

Yes, I love numbers!

We live in an area with big houses with gates a long way apart. If I walk to the village, I count the steps between gates to see which pair are the furthest apart. This is partly automatic, but also I think it seems to get you to the end quicker.

When the boys were young and we did quite a bit of motorway travelling, we used to guess how many bridges there were between service stations, and then count them. It was amazing how quickly the journey passed! :-) :-)

Anybody else have any other obsessions?

Railway carriages ad trucks at the level crossing.

My late husband used to count Eddie Stobart lorries on the roads,especially on long journeys.
When the children were young ....no tablets or DVDs to keep them amused....one would count say,blue cars and the other red cars.
In Australia,my grandchildren would count up who could count most yellow cars ....mainly taxi cabs...

Calories, that's as far as my counting obsession goes

Sometimes - not always, I count the motorbikes on the A272, whilst going to my sisters. :-)

Since joining these threads I COUNT my fellow posters as friends. Thank you.

I count down backwards from100 to try and get to sleep at night. Sometimes it works sometimes not.

I never thought to mention Eddie Stobart lorries because I thought that was as universal as breathing.

Sometimes we have a competition where one of us collects Eddies and the other Norbert Dentresangles.

Tenerife Sun, I wish I had thought of that one. I tried counting forwards to 100 last night but my mind kept wandering to other things. It was well after 4 a.m. before I got to sleep (made the mistake of getting low on sleeping pills, so tried going cold turkey last night). I got up at 8 a.m. to take my eye drops and other pills (not sleeping ones) and have breakfast. Then I spent the rest of the morning on the sofa sleeping until 11.30 a.m. Not quite so zombieish now. Hope I sleep better tonight. One pill left, but saving that for Monday night so I can be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for going to town on Tuesday.
:-\ Yes, I know that smiley is supposed to be bored, but it looks the way I felt this morning. :-S

Good Morning All, first time I've been on here for a while. Sharon, you won't see so many Norbert Dentressangle lorries, they don't exist any more. I work for them, but they became XPO Logistics about a year ago. But the reason I joined in this thread is about the counting. I have a friend who has an autistic son, he made a comment recently about him playing football and not being bothered about getting the ball because he's more interested in how many holes there are in the net. I mentioned that when I am reading a book it takes me ages, because I suddenly realise that I am counting how many words there are in each line instead of concentrating on reading. He told me that this is an autistic trait, and that lots of people have autistic traits but it doesn't really affect their lives like full autism. For example I don't read books much because it frustrates me to realise I have stopped and I can't find any way of controlling it. Maybe all the examples you have given above are also autistic traits. If anybody feels the need it might be worth further investigation - I am merely passing on what I have been told by a workmate.

Thanks for that Duncan. Very interesting.

I think everybody is autistic to some degree.I couldn't imagine being able to function at all if I put my foot into the left leg of my jeans first when I got dressed one day.

Life is all about counting and sorting :-D :-D