Brent eats fast. Like he's done with his meal before I've really gotten started. Part of that is that I'm a talker and when we sit down to dinner I want to talk about whatever it is that I've seen or done or thought about that day. I want to hear about his day as well but he's not a talker so I normally only get "fine" as a response. But I try.
But the main reason why he's so fast is from his time in basic training in the Navy. They had a really limited amount of time allowed for meals. And the time was start to finish, standing in line, getting your food, eating, and clearing your plate. So he learned during that stretch, and then his whole stint in the Navy to eat fast.
He's tried to break the habit a few times to no avail. He's just fast.
I am fast in the shower. Large family, small water heater growing up. Even if you started with hot water it was a total crap shoot how long you would have any. So I am in and out of the shower quickly. The longer my hair, the longer the shower but that's about the only thing that changes.
We had an 80 gallon hot water heater in the townhouse (I had an extra large soaking tub put in during the remodel, to fill an extra large soaking tub you need an extra large hot water heater) and we have a tankless hot water system here. Basically it takes a bit for the water to heat up as it passes through the system but as soon as you have hot water you have hot water until you turn it off. Never ending supply. But I still take a really fast shower.
When we (either one of us) are driving and we go through a yellow light we scratch or tap the roof of the car. "Scratch to keep the fuzz away" was the saying. I picked it up from a friend and started doing it, Brent picked it up from me. We've both been doing it since we were 16. And habitually we both still do it now. And to be perfectly fair, I've never gotten a ticket for running a light so...
Brent and I have talked about these things, and a few more, and we both believe the things you learn to do when you are younger stick with you harder. It's much harder to break a habit you picked up as a kid (and he was still a kid when he joined the Navy) than it is to break one you pick up as an adult. Those later in life habits are transient things but the habits of our youth take a lot of work to unstick.
And the first step is recognizing why you do something the way you do.
For instance the shower thing with me? It wasn't until this past weekend when we were talking about how fast I am in the shower (How are you done? You just closed the door.) that I even realized that it was that I was faster than everyone else. I just assumed anyone else was slow. Like you know, there are people out there that love to luxuriate in the shower. Just let the water hit them, steam up the whole place, daydream about the world, whatever it is they are doing. But yeah, talking about it and remembering when Katie brought home this shower timer thing from some water conservation talk and we were supposed to only shower for that amount of time. I never even came close to using up the whole time. I thought they must have padded it to make it doable.
Nope. I just rarely take more than 5 or 10 minutes in the shower. Ten is if I need to shave my legs. And that's probably padding the number on my end.
But as we talked I thought about it and yeah, I am quick, but I always had to be. Then it dawned on me. Childhood habit.
Now part of why they stick so hard is that we do them and don't stop doing them, so DECADES of habit built up. I also think part of why they stick is the same reason why so many things from our childhood stick. Our minds aren't as full. We are learning things for the first time. 242-3480 That was my childhood phone number. Hasn't been my phone number since I was 18 but I still remember it. Now ask me if I know Katie's phone number. I never had to learn it (it's programmed into my phone) and so I never did. Even phone numbers I've had to learn in the past 20 years are mostly gone. I knew them for as long as I needed to and then let them go. And since they were overwriting so many other things and being overwritten by more they went.
But those things we learned the first time we had to learn them. Those things we did over and over as kid to the point where we just did them as habit later without ever thinking about why we did them? Those things stick.
Change is hard. Even when we know we need to it's hard. Realizing where all of those old habits come from is a good place to start.
Even if you aren't going to change them and you'll always eat faster than everyone else or shower quicker than most people at least you'll know why you do what you do.
As you can tell this is bumping around in my brain. I think there is something else I am supposed to be paying attention to, or something for a story in here that my subconscious just hasn't released yet. So I wrote it all down to see if that helps.
Also a habit from when I was a kid.
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