Methods and mannerisms are lint—one tends not to notice their acquisitions unless one’s carefully examining their shirt, or accidentally steps under a black light so each spec glows luminescent. As people aren’t cognizant of their accents until they travel, so it is with the Tiny Mannerisms decorating ordinary practices.

Timeline of Yours Truly’s Significant Observations of Individual Differences in Performing Banal Activities:

Age 7: Standing on an island of dirt in the Potwin Elementary Gravel Sea, I’m surprised to hear my best friend Zach reciting an unfamiliar mantra as he fumbles with his shoelace. I learned about a bunny rabbit jumping through a hoop—he’s muttering nonsense about army troopers; everyone’s shoelace is a rabbit rounding a bend.

Age 10: I see my Uncle Ray looping a length of rayon around his neck to make what looks like the clip-on device at my collar. Why’s he doing that? I realize my own ornament is an imitator, and that the word “tie” has more meaning than I’d reckoned.

Age 15: It’s the first day of gym class, Coach made everyone jump in the shower. I walk toward to my locker and stare in disbelief at Blake, the first one out, who’s got his towel wrapped around his chest like a girl. He looks puzzled at my gaze, then as other boys file into the row of lockers his expression changes to one of embarrassment. Andrew teases him, but he’s not paying attention; he’s baffled by our caveman-style fashion. Blake was raised by his mother, I learn, and is brother to six sisters. They’d never owned a television; he never realized there was a “masculine” method of wearing a towel.

Age 20: In his book The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker mentions a simple method for lifting public toilet seats: using one’s foot. I’d always used two squares of toilet paper to ease open the seat. Stupidly obvious.

Age 22: I’m looking at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, fussing with my hair, trying not to bump into Christy as she washes her face. She reaches for her toothbrush, runs it under the tap, applies toothpaste, then begins to brush. I’m dumbstruck. I’d always loaded the toothbrush then run water over—a technique that often washes the Colgate straight to the drain. Dampening first, then paste; it was brilliant. I adopt this method immediately. Why’d this never occurred to me?

Age 25: Standing at the leftmost urinal in a McDonald’s bathroom, I look straight ahead, as is customary—there’s a businessman in the rightmost position. I hear the door opening and the sound of feet stepping to the middle stall. I keep looking forward. The noise of a third stream of piss hitting porcelain starts. There’s motion at my periphery of vision. I don’t know what’s happening at the next urinal, but I’ve a hunch it’s abnormal. I turn right, barely, and see a balding head swaying, but I don’t see enough to take in what’s happening before I meet the glance of the businessman—he too has turned. We quickly return our sights to the walls, aware of our violations of convention. Finished, I button my trousers and step to a sink. I turn on the faucet and look back to see a white-haired man with his thumbs in his pockets, swaying like a reed. I look at the yellow stream beneath his legs, then at his holstered fingers, then at his waterfall again. I can’t fathom this man. Surely in his many years this fellow’s realized the benefit of using his hands to guide his cantilevered gutter, I think; surely he knows there’s a Better Way.