I paint my toes because I bite my nails.

When I woke up this morning, I rubbed my eyes and slapped my cheeks to liven myself up a little more. I had a furious headache, but I always do when I wake up, so I ignored it. I put my feet on the ground, and cracked my toes, then my knuckles. I walked to the bathroom to wash my face, I looked in the mirror, (squinted, really, I wasn't wearing my glasses): I saw mostly messy hair, but also a pinky finger in my mouth. After washing my face, I went back to my room. I sat in the chair, turned on the computer, then leaned back. I crossed my legs. After about 20 minutes, I uncrossed them, and crossed them again the other way around. I cracked my knuckles, one by one. I checked my facebook. Bored, and drumming my fingers on my desk, I spied a pen. I picked it up. I put it in my mouth, and began to chew. Staring blankly at my facebook page, I leaned back in my chair and began twirling the messy hair around a finger.

Sound familiar? I hope not.

It turns out I posses seven out of eight of America's most common bad habits. How unfortunate. I only wanted to look up some information about nervous habits, my original aim with this blog post, and instead, I found something much worse. I opened up the trusty Google hompage, and found a list that seemed promising. Scrolling through it, I was just looking for nail biting. It was indeed on there, along with six other bad habits I apparently also possess, but never really thought about as being habits, let alone bad habits! Man, did I feel bad about myself, because in addition to being really annoying and incredibly unattractive to look at, there's actually loads negative health effects behind all of them... and the hits just keep on coming.

MSN tells us, (under the "Diseases and Conditions" tab, how encouraging), that the eight most common bad habits Americans posses are as follows:

1. Hair Twirling
2. Smoking
3. Teeth Grinding and Jaw Clenching
4. Nail Biting
5. Leg Crossing
6. Pen Chewing
7. Knuckle Cracking
8. Face Touching

Sound familiar? (I hope so, because I just wrote about them...) I don't smoke, I think I would know, but disregarding that one, I do everything on that list within the 10 minutes after I wake up. What does that mean for the amount of times I must exhibit these habits in a day? Terrible things. Not even great but terrible like Voldemort. Just terrible.

Hair twirling makes you go bald, jaw clenching and teeth grinding is probably responsible for all of my nasty headaches, not to mention the enamel wearing away on my teeth. Nail biting is gross and just plain unattractive, but at least I don't bite them down to the quick like others do, which leads to infection and the weakening of your nails. You can't really paint them, either -- nail polish isn't that tasty. Leg crossing? What? Well, apparently it leads to a boat load of nerve damage. Wonderful. Way to take away my favorite sitting position... and what do I like to do in that favorite sitting position? Chew on pens! But there's about 60,000 freaking germs on a pen cap! Knuckle cracking is just annoying to other people, but touching your face can lead to so many problems with your skin. Gross.

I've been advised by MSN to quit these habits immediately. How am I supposed to kick something that I've been doing every day for the majority of my life? I guess I should just off myself now, before I have to deal with baldness, losing my teeth, weak nails, nerve damage, an increased number of colds from all those pen germs, the angry mob outside my house who refuse to listen to me crack my knuckles anymore, or bad skin. Sounds like a pretty miserable existence... but there's still a lot of the world I want to see, and a lot people to piss off via knuckle cracking. So, too bad MSN, you're going to have to deal.

Go on, check out how many you possess, and how bleak your future's looking. You know you want to.