Every person I have ever known has had a strange habit or two. I've a number of strange habits myself. However, I've never encountered an odd or esoteric behavioral quirk that was as interesting as the one exhibited by a young woman I met while I was living in Glasgow.
This woman, who was 23 when I met her back in '97, had developed the habit of walking with a limp whenever she was attracted to a person.
I only discovered that she did not actually have a limp a couple of days after I had first met her, when we met up for dinner at a small chip shop (I know, all chip shops are small, so to state it was a small chip shop is a little redundant).
We had agreed to meet at 3:00 one afternoon, and I had arrived a bit early. Sitting on a bench inside the shop I was looking out the window towards the bus stop watching for her to arrive when I saw her walking up the road. I immediately noticed that she was not walking with the limp she had possessed when I had seen her on every other prior occasion.
When she came through the door and saw me sitting on the bench, she immediately walked over to me - with a limp.
This struck me as quite odd, and after she sat down next to me I straight out asked her, "How come you don't always walk with a limp?"
She looked at me with a somewhat startled expression and sat quietly for a few seconds, then said, "You caught that, eh? You are an observant one, that's certain. Well, it's simple. Whenever I meet a man I want paying attention to me, I limp - I discovered a long time ago that most men pay more attention to a girl with a limp than to one without."
I smiled at her and laughed a little. That she limped when she saw me was one heckuva compliment in light of that information. It was a weird quirk to be sure, but I was cool with it.
Until about a month later, when I realized she was no longer limping when I was around.
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