Are you a 'sorter'?

[rustychisel]

Do you sort or grade some things for no reason you can discern? Eat one colour M & M first; or leave to last?

Here, some of my favourite biscuits (ie cookies) come in three embossed designs. For as long as I can recall I've sorted YoYo biscuits and always eat the wiggly ones first, then the edged ones, then the two halved ones. Always.

http://chillikebab.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/yoyobiscuit.jpg

Fruit gums: always eat the green ones first, then the yellow. Always the blue or red last.

What about you?

Whilst there may be a relationship between these ideas, I'm not really talking about obsessive sorting, compiling and archiving of all possessions, just the odd quirk or two.

[velotrack]

Besides food, I don't think there's anything I try to do things in certain order for.

Or at least nothing like cookies comes to mind.

[cinema]

girlfriend does this. it's especially bad with french fries. even inside the theater, during the middle of a movie, she is preoccupied with sorting through the bag of popcorn and eating things in the order of her arbitrary taste and texture preference.

[benitosan1972]

I sort food all the time. I like to eat things in pairs. Pairs that are similar, symmetric, identical. Like bananas, if I eat one, the second one can't be longer or thicker. Eggs should be same size. Cookies & donuts the same size, shape, texture. I've always eaten like this. It never bothers me. And I get to eat twice as much! I should be fat, but I'm not. Win! :banana:

[Fiertetimestwo]

Rustychisel,

This is indeed very interesting.

Some have said I have tendency to sort things out and tidy things up that sometimes is out of control (ask Bridget and Ned how I hang the washing out), HOWEVER, in all my years, I have never even noticed that Yo-Yo's had different patterns!

[CunegoFan]

When I was a kid I discovered that crunch berries need to be eaten last.

[Asudef]

Not necessarily that particular but I tend to eat the least desirable things first and finish with the ones I like.

When eating sandwiches I also like to end with a center rather than a crust piece but thats about it.

[weiwentg]

I used to sort out the brown M&Ms and eat them last.

[93legendti]

My wife sorts seeds and nuts...I am always saying "they're all the same, honey".

[carpediemracing]

Not necessarily that particular but I tend to eat the least desirable things first and finish with the ones I like.

When eating sandwiches I also like to end with a center rather than a crust piece but thats about it.

This is me. Pizza I tend to go the opposite direction (crust is 2nd last, tip, middle, crust, finish) else it gets too soggy to hold.

I learned the hard way that traditional polite Japanese will refill your serving when you get about 2/3 done. All my hard work eating strange-to-me foods went down the drain when they all got refilled automatically. I learned to eat about 1/2 of those foods and then eat as much of the good (or not too expensive, depending on my hosts' economic condition) stuff.

A long time ago my sister noticed that there were fewer orange M&Ms so I usually save those for last. Green used to be the default "last". If a package has an unusual ratio of colors (like 90% yellow and a few others) then I'll save the majority or the minority, depending on my mood. Brown is almost always the first "flavor" I eat.

Never heard of Yo-Yo cookies.

I'm not very organized "in real life" if you will.

[redir]

It's called obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and I think we all have it to some degree. I don't really sort food i just eat it. But if I step on a crack in the sidewalk with my left foot then I have to step on one with the right foot to make it even and to set the natural order of the world back to normal. I also count things all the time like taking steps up stairs.

[LesMiner]

This thread reminds of an experience I had when I was 3 or 4 years old. I was having lunch at a friends house, part of a play date I guess. Anyway, lunch was alphabet soup. The friend, same age as me, fished out all the "A"s from the soup and stacked them on table. I pointed out that doing that was a bad idea and could have undesireable consequences. He continued and I suggested to use a napkin or something but no he did not. Then his mother came in saw what he had done. She sort of lost it. She scolded him and the play date was over and I was sent home.

I am not too compulsive but I do sort pretzel rods. The big ones that are 8 or 9 inches long. I eat the broken ones first by searching through the bag. I then rearrange the bag to get access to the broken ones. My wife will reach into the bag and break a piece off a whole one. Oh the horror of it all!

So is this sorting compulsion a disorder or a mental exercise to take the challenge of bringing order to chaos?

[Lewis Moon]

Heh....My wife has a PhD in psychology. You do NOT want her to come here....

[oliver1850]

I remember a breakfast with my team manager and his wife, where they told me about his father (retired aircraft mechanic) and his way of spreading jam perfectly evenly on the toast. They thought it was silly to bother about such things, and I didn't admit to be an "even spreader" - I thought that was the way everyone did it. I'm guessing that very few of the father's planes fell out of the sky due to his mechanical errors. I sort of resent the term OCD, as I don't think attention to detail is a disorder. If I'm cleaning sewers it's probably not worth the time to get the lone turd out of the corner, but don't call me OCD when I'm taking too long following some sterile medical procedure. People are different, and suited to different tasks.

I do prefer to eat the broken potato chips out of the bag first, so I don't end up with solid crumbs at the end.

[pinkshogun]

im not a sorter but your mention of chips makes me want some...does that have a clinical name?

[tiretrax]

im not a sorter but your mention of chips makes me want some...does that have a clinical name?

Monk! I just plow through the cookie box. I hope that doesn't upset anyone.