{"id":164862,"date":"2024-10-18T06:28:21","date_gmt":"2024-10-18T12:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=164862"},"modified":"2024-10-18T10:56:13","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T16:56:13","slug":"are-you-a-counter-i-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/18\/are-you-a-counter-i-am\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You A ‘Counter’? I Am"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sorry, no birds today. My mind is on something else.<\/p>\n

I’m actually a little embarrassed to be posting this but my curiosity got the best of me.<\/p>\n

A few days ago my friend Wayne Watson made a Facebook post that got my little mind humming. He posted a photo of him slicing a stick of butter for popcorn and said:<\/p>\n

“Whenever I have to chop, cut, or dice something… no particular measurements, just have to cut it up into smaller pieces… I find myself counting in my head. Tonight I’m cutting up a stick of butter to melt for our popcorn and once again, in my head is “one, two, three, four, five…”. Why? I don’t need a specific number of anything, yet every time “one, two, three, four, five…”. Anyone else?”<\/em><\/p>\n

His post struck a chord with me because I’ve been doing something similar for years and I don’t understand why I do it. Whenever I’m doing something that requires repeated actions or motions, or whenever I hear repeated sounds, I count in my head (not out loud). I can’t help myself, it just happens.<\/p>\n

When it happened again when I was making pizza for dinner on the same day Wayne made his FB post I decided to make a similar blog post, describing what I do and asking my readers if any of them do something similar. I’m curious if it’s a fairly unique idiosyncrasy or more common than I think it might be.<\/p>\n

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When I make homemade pizza, which is often, I’m a bit of a pepperoni snob. I think pre-sliced pepperoni lacks in quality (it’s usually greasy and unappetizing), so I always buy my pepperoni in sticks and slice it myself. And yes, I counted every piece in my head as I sliced it.<\/p>\n

As a side note, I’m not so fussy about my mozzarella cheese but the parmesan has to be Reggiano.<\/p>\n

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This time I ended up with 39 slices, not counting the two end pieces. The end pieces and three slices ended up as pre-dinner snack bites. So my pepperoni and mushroom pizza had 36 slices of pepperoni on it. (I didn’t count the mushroom pieces. Even I have limits. Besides, I didn’t slice them.)<\/p>\n

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I’ve done a lot of furniture-making over the years and woodworking often requires repeated cuts or other actions. So I do a lot of unnecessary counting in my woodshop. Below is one of many examples.<\/p>\n

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You’ve seen this photo before, of the antique-style pie safe I built.<\/p>\n

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The pie safe has six panels of punched tin representing shocks of wheat. I had to punch the tin, using specialized punches of two different shapes – round holes and slits.<\/p>\n

Each panel required 329 punches. Apparently the little gremlin in my mind that requires me to count thought that that many punches was too many to count, so for each panel I punched the holes first and at least tried to count them as I went (243). Then I punched the slits in each panel (86). I was pretty successful in keeping up with the counts of the slits – less so with the holes. But I tried. I kind of had to.<\/p>\n

Repeated sounds are another thing my mind automatically counts. An example would be when I’m at bird refuges photographing birds during hunting season. When I hear shotgun blasts I count them. Always. I’d be a great witness at a murder trial involving multiple gunshots.<\/p>\n

When I first started photographing birds I even tried to count shutter clicks in a burst. When burst rates were slow, as they were in early digital cameras, I was often successful. But with modern cameras and faster burst rates I no longer try. Thankfully.<\/p>\n

So, I’m curious. Does anyone else do the same thing? Or something similar?<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note:<\/em><\/p>\n

The extreme form of my ‘condition’ is called arithmomania<\/a><\/span><\/span>. But thankfully I never feel the need to do any of the following, all of which can be symptomatic of the disorder.<\/em><\/p>\n