In a small café in Seattle, a slight, blond, impeccably groomed thirty-six-year-old man takes a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his double-breasted Armani jacket and meticulously wipes the seat of a chair, then wipes the curves of its intricately designed wrought iron back. He then offers the handkerchief to his equally well-dressed companion, who has been watching the younger man's actions with a mixture of barely-restrained exasperation and weary tolerance. The older man declines the handkerchief with a curt "No, thank you," and both sit down for cappuccino and conversation.
Fans of Frasier will recognize this particular bit of staging from the pilot episode, which is repeated, with variations, throughout the eleven-year run of the series. With that one obsessive-compulsive quirk, much of the character of Niles Crane is immediately revealed, and from it we come to expect similar mannerisms as we further our acquaintance with him. It doesn't surprise us, for instance, that he times his bedtime ablutions to precisely twenty minutes, or that he carries in his breast pocket at all times, besides the handkerchief, a small sewing kit and a silverware chamois; nor does it surprise us that he handles the books in his vast library with the fastidiousness of a surgeon. But despite all these odd little quirks, or I dare say, because of them, Niles Crane has become one of the most beloved characters in sitcom history.
I've been thinking today about the various quirks of my friends and relatives. One friend, for instance, eats her meals "compartmentally": she eats her protein all at once, then her starch all at once, then one vegetable, and finally, the other vegetable. Never does she take a bit of each, as most of us do, making a little tour round our plates to compose that perfectly balanced mouthful. She is the only friend I have who eats this particular way, and though I've known her for over two decades, I've never asked why she does so. From the beginning of our friendship, I simply accepted this quirk as part of who she is -- a kind, soft-spoken, generous, and talented person who happens to have a slightly peculiar way of eating. And though this quirk of hers continues to puzzle me, it in no way lessens my affection for her; if anything, I like her even more for it. It sets her apart from the rest of my menagerie of friends and acquaintances.
My father, God rest his soul, had many quirks. One was a result of being in the army, or so we've chosen to explain it: after we dressed to go out somewhere, he would pick lint off our clothing like a spider monkey grooming its mate. No matter how pristine we thought our appearance, he'd find at least a few microscopic bits of lint, and wouldn't let us out the door till he had removed them. As a child, I of course found this excessive and annoying; as I grew older, I brushed it off (pardon the pun) with, "It's the army in him." Indeed, the army was my father and he, the army. The two of them were inseparable, both in our minds and in reality.
Another longtime friend of mine once wrote a poem about me in which she mentions several of my quirks -- my predilection for black and grey clothing and Italian shoes, my way of ordering espresso ("very short, very dense" -- like a tiresome parrot) -- and she summed up her poetic view of me as someone "longing for a time before being eccentric was fashionable." I loved the poem, but was prompted after reading it to ask a number of people, "Am I eccentric?" Oddly, nobody answered this in words; they only gave me a long, sideways stare. Rather than take umbrage, I decided to take the attitude that we are the sum of our quirks, plus everything else, and those quirks only serve to distinguish us in the eyes of others. I am the woman who orders very short, very dense espresso. My friend is the woman who eats compartmentally. Niles Crane is the man who wipes off chairs before he sits in them. There's no mistaking any of us for someone else.
I will go further, and assert that our quirks are what makes us lovable, albeit in a roundabout, irritating-exasperating way. A little spice in the mix never hurts. It is, after all, what gives us our distinctive, individual flavor.
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