I'm sitting on a boring conference call and started thinking about rituals. I actually have fought myself to have less rituals, as most of mine were "OCD-like" and really bothered me. For example, I used to always make sure I started walking with my left foot and stopped with my right, so I would take an even number ofsteps. I'd end up bumping into things and going near bonkers when I had to stop, trying to remember what foot took the last step. That was a bad ritual, though it's funny in hind sight.
We have some rituals with Ona that are pretty cool, though. Every night at bed time we close the blinds, then the drapes while saying good night to our neighbors. I wish I could say it's because we want her to have a sense of community, but it's really just because windows are her favorite toy. We open them up and say "good morning" to the neighbors in the morning.
I'm drawing blanks on other things we do now, though. If you want to look into behaviors people get into, there are probably few groups of people with more bizarre rituals than baseball players. They are widely thought of as highly superstitious, and players tend to get into rituals with things such as patterns of adjusting between pitches, jumping over the foul line when going onto/off the field, drawing symbols in the dirt with their bats/feet, and on and on. I never strung together a great enough run to have one common ritual, so I can't say I was a member of that club, but I love learning what the pros do to calm their nerves.
If you want to read more, this article has some good tales of superstitions, some are rituals, some are just superstitions. The biggest ritual guy I can think of is a player named Nomar Garciaparra. Between pitches, he goes through a very elaborate deal where he adjusts his gloves, taps his toes, adjusts the gloves, taps the toes, taps the helmet, and so on.
Eric Muntz
Projectminer.com
ericmuntz@gmail.com
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