Just Trying to Figure Out If I'm Abnormal or Not!

Published Mar 26, 2025, 7:00 PM

On the Wednesday March 26, 2025 edition of The Armstrong & Getty Show features...

  • What qualifies as a quirk? 
  • Is the range of normal wider than we think? 

Just trying to figure out if I'm abnormal or not. It's one more thing I'm strong andy, one more thing I.

Think we can answer that is there going to be a vote?

Don't even need to know the context? No, No, Matt, We're good.

No question as phrased, was plenty.

You know, to a certain extent. I'll admit I might be an outlier, but on a number of things. But everybody you know, like if you really know them, the whole idea of like normal or average or whatever, because like everybody you know, like really know, don't they have like some serious quirks, every single one of them. I can't think of anybody I like, really really know, maybe outside my mom and dad. My mom and dad really don't have any but I don't know.

Yeah, I mean mostly sure, Yeah.

I think everybody was so so the range of normal that we generally think of in our minds, just for thinking of the population a whole, is much narrower than my real experience now as a person with a number of quirks. Maybe a hang around other people with other people who have lots of quirks also, which is almost certainly true. But I just think the range of normals way wider than we tend to.

Oh yeah, yeah, our public face, our presentation of ourselves is much more tailored than the reality. When you really get to know somebody, you know, as Seinfeld put it, you see their side, their other side or whatever. I just sure, yeah, and it's fine.

One of my dearest actually Greg Greg Gory. He came on one of the podcasts back last summer. He is so clean, like there are you go into his house, you just don't want to touch anything. But one of his biggest annoyances is when the condiments are lined up in the labels don't line up with each other. So I used to whenever I'd go over to his house, I'd like twist the ketchup bottle like a quarter of an inch to the left.

Wow.

Wow.

So why do you think we act like there's a normal range that's a much more narrow band than is our life experience. I wonder why I've never even really thought about this before.

You know, I think this may fit into the I really need to come up with a name for this concept. The speed limit on the highway is not seventy because they want everybody to do seventy. It's because they don't want people to do one hundred, So it's not in our our concept of normal isn't enforced. But stay within, you know, shouting distance of it, you know what I'm saying.

Yeah, I'm trying to go through people in my head though, and like every person that, like, I really know, and if you don't really know somebody, then then you don't know. But everybody that I really know has got like a couple of things that are pretty.

Wacky, and we're gauging that off of except for me, I mean obviously, but go on clearly, but we're gauging that off of like our normal.

Like, there are people that I know that I think are just weirder than hell, and they've got a whole group of people that are weird as hell like them, and they think that's normal.

True.

Yeah, so that gets back to my I'm pretty quirky, so I tend to hang around quirky people because people that aren't quirky wouldn't be interested to me and vice versa. So yeah, so you got that.

Right. Yeah, it's probably one of the reasons I'm actually pretty tolerant of people with different political views. It's because I've spent my life among musicians. Half of them are completely nuts or wrong about everything, but they're lovely people. Yeah, anyway, I just don't want them in charge.

This is a pretty bland question that I've got for the setup that I put out there. But what temperature you I'm going to ask everybody here because I'm trying to figure out how close to normal I am. What temperature do you keep the house at at night? Michael? What do you set thermostat at at night?

Probably route seventy?

Okay, Katie just responded with a wide eyed flinch. What do you keep it at?

I keep it at sixty six, sixty seven.

I could never sleep at seventy now almost exactly the same on the chili side. Yeah, answer, I couldn't sleep any of the season. Is that where you find most comfortable or most financially comfortable? Financially comfortable, right, because there's a difference.

Yeah, I would like sixty eight or sixty seven.

Probably.

I put my thermostat at whatever makes me comfortable, comfortable, regardless of finances. Even when I was well and I was poor, I didn't run the air conditioner at all. I mean, my roommates, we'd lay on the couch in shorts sleep all night long with the doors and windows wide open. So we didn't die because we just there was no freaking wake. We could afford air conditioning. It wasn't even even a question of turning on. I didn't end up speaking of court. People hanging around, hang around people like yourself, everybody I knew, girlfriends, whatever. Nobody ran their air conditioner. Nobody, because like I had one girlfriend who lived with their parents, So you go over there, they had air condisriering. We'd go to the mall for air conditioning. But but anyway, once I started making some money, I decided, I'm going to keep it comfortable in my house. I don't care if I have to walk to work or donate plasma. This is one thing I'm going to do. I'm going to keep it comfortable mass But seventy seems a little warm to me.

All right, it is too warm?

Sorry, you wish it were cooler.

Yeah, I'm changing it. After what you just said, I'm going to change my ways.

Not get down a couple of degrees. Get to yourself.

I would have cheaper I would eat cheaper food before I would give up the comfortable temperature at night.

Definitely, Yeah, still groceries. It's legal in California. Michael, how it's not illegal.

How about during the day, what do you keep it at? Same same?

Yeah? Yeah, same summers. Oh in the really you keep it like sixty seven when it's one hundred and three out Katie, And then I would well, are we talking about during sleeping?

What do you keep it at during the day? Joe is astonished. So what are you going with the daytime temperature?

Yeah? You Joe, Uh well, it depends on the season of the year. I mean, you just.

Don't go comfort. Only comfort. The only number I care about.

Is I'm talking about comfort. Interrupt this, Maximus. If you come in from one hundred and four degree day, seventy six is pretty damn call.

I couldn't live in a house. It's oh my god. I would run screaming from a home that was so okay, no way, yeah, that would be honestly, you know what, I think.

We keep it seventy four, seventy three something like that. But if you keep it way cooler than that, right.

Oh yeah, that'd be way too hot for You're.

Always wearing a freaking suit, throwing some shorts. That's the thing I'm wearing soccer shorts and a T shirt.

Joe and judyist. So that's what he wants to leave on. But it is cooler personal. So your daytime temperature hot day, Katie, probably sixty eight. Yeah, I'm closer to that.

Yeah, I'm not like polar bears. Well I'm much it is. When I get hot, I get pissed. Yeah, so around angry all the time.

Yeah.

So I like to keep it cool and even to the point where it's like, if I start to get cold, I can I can put a hoodie on.

Yep, exactly. I'll throw on a hoodie in my house because it's too cool.

Yeah.

See, I feel like a sin layer of sweat makes me glow.

I think they didn't that special listening exactly.

And Michael, hot day inside, your temperature is.

Uh definitely uh nope, sixty nine.

I'd say, yeah, okay, that's pretty cool. Yeah, and this is also uh a thing if you live with somebody else, These are not minor concerns if you live with somebody else. You know, you and Judy have been together so long. I don't know what point you came together on your temperatures or if you just agreed from the beginning. But you have to have to come to an agreement on these sorts of things. And some people are hot blooded and some people are cold blooded and whatever.

Had this conversation one time, and one time only got freezing in my house.

Looked at droom.

Is the ac on?

Yeah?

Whatever?

Sixty one degrees?

Sixty one's chilly?

Oh boy, wow, it's.

Like, are you okay? Are you trying to kill me? So he's been keeping meat good of somewhere.

I don't know if sixty one is chilly.

Yeah, that's that happened because it's.

Regularly, for whatever reason, the thermostat in the studio resets to sixty four on the weekends, and when we walk in here on Monday mornings, it's freaking cold. If sixty four feels like that, it's sixty one.

Wow, Well in the fans on high so you have to work in the wind chill too. That feels like it is like fifty four.

But you don't have your fridge. You can just leave the fridge door open and unplugged and everything. Stay your meat, your condiments, everything's good because it's sixty one.

In your house, orderline frozen.

Yeah, So speaking of the meat, and condiments. Uh. And and your your buddy with the all of these condiments have to be faced. As you say, in the grocery business, uh, and also in the bank teller business. Judy and I share this. We have got to if I have cash in my wallet, the bills must be faced. They must all be facing the same way. If they're like a mishmash, one's upside down, ones backwards and all, I can't stand it.

Mine just have to be an order. They don't have to be faced.

They have to be faced.

I have a yeah, I'm I'm. If I've got a little bit of time, they don't have to be faced, but I will do it if I've got a couple of seconds. Make sure they're all turned the same direction. But the order thing got to be the twenties on the inside, then tens and fives and ones as I got them fold in my pocket. Gotta be. I can't imagine walking around with them just.

Reverse pimprol small bills on the outside.

Well that's what I got, Yeah, my smallde oh I thoctually have the big bills, fold it around my Costco card. That's how I carry my cash.

So Joe h all of his one hundred dollars bills inside the ones.

Well, and my thousands are inside the hundreds.

Yeah.

Yeah, my son has got one one hundred dollars bill that he got from I don't know what, Grandma and grandpa or something, and he likes to wrap that around his money like he's a wrapper or something.

You know. Wow, I play in a fairly big golf game every weekend with a bunch of different guys, and you kick in twenty bucks in all, but somebody inevitably shows up with like a hundred throws that in there, and come on, come on, a flex. As I've said many times in a lot of day to day life, one hundred dollars bill, you might as well have a fish. You're trying to go around and trade a fish for, you know, that gallon of milker or you know, I just need this and can you break that? And they look at you. No, No, take your fish and go elsewhere.

When I used to get to break that, when I used to travel around Mexico a lot, twenty was like that. Twenty dollars in Mexico money might as well have been a brick. No, he was going to have change for that.

Gosh, when I was bartending at a little dive bar and I was like the midday shift, so it wasn't crazy busy. There was this one guy that always came in. All he ever had were fifty dollars bills and he would buy one drink and I'd look at him and go, have you not learned your lesson?

Like, we can't you keep breaking these?

You don't have your change from yesterday?

He was laundering money? Oh okay, probably or something, Yeah, ozark like it's a little weird.

Yeah, I had one more thought on that was it the money? Oh so it's a little OCD right the whole I can't walk around with either the money facing the wrong direction or not in the right order. That's because there's no logic behind that.

No, no, not per se. I mean I can recognize a five dollar bill on the back to the numbers right there. Yeah, I find that interesting.

Also speaking of quirks, is everybody's different levels of OCD. Mine is quite mild, and I know more people. I know people that have it more, but it's not to.

The like debilitating.

Yeah. I don't know what the proper medical term is to do where you actually have to adjust your life around like like my son. I mean, he's got OCD do a level that he has to adjust his life around it. And thank god, I don't have that. He takes medicine for it. But you know, we've all got a little bit of it.

I have that with parking in a parking space, I have to get it just right, like right in the middle.

Well, that's pride, that's not OCD. That's being a man. No offense, Katie.

I can't microwave anything on an odd number, just can't. I'm gonna cook it for twenty seconds or twenty four seconds or eighteen seconds, but I ain't gonna do it for nineteen seconds.

My car, you can set the temperature. I always go in even increments, and I decided that was stupid, and so now I'm disciplining myself to mix in some odd increments so I don't get fixated.

Well, but the benefits are really you're really reaping the benefits of this chain.

Well, well, there's a freedom in it, Jack. If I want it to be seventy three, I set it at seventy three. Damn it, God, I'm not gonna settle for seventy two or oh sweltering seventy four.

No, I'm going to dial you know what I'm gonna do that today. I want to warm up that fresh bread to put butter on it. I'm gonna microwave it for fourteen seconds. No, no, I did it again, fourteen seconds. Wow, he's worse than we saw him touch a kitty. Yes, I'll write an odd number like fourteen.

Are we three?

Now? Oh?

Wait, no, I'll try sixteen.

No, God, well, join us next time for when the staff will discuss whether we whether we like partly cloudy, mostly cloudy, or fully overcast conditions. Well, I guess that's it.

That is funny, Michael,

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