Habits or Eccentricity

Anyone who has spent more than half an hour in my home will be aware that the unwary are likely to encounter.................a slipper, or maybe two, in odd places.

Among my odd habits is the one of kicking off my slippers whenever my feet become too hot.

This might be both, or just one.  If it is the latter, at some stage I will become aware that I am doing a "Hopalong Cassidy" and am minus a slipper.

I might then kick off  its fellow, or go on a slipper hunt.

Sometimes both are hiding in the same place huddled pathetically together, waiting to be found.  More often they are in widely different places and if I can't see them, or it, my nose will soon re-acquaint us.

It had honestly never occurred to me that this was in any way eccentric, but, since finding one after a lengthy search, in the vegetable rack in the kitchen I have been forced to reconsider.

This is not, as some might suggest, anything to do with advancing years, merely the fairly common phenomenon of the hands doing one thing, while the mind does something else.  Well, common for me anyway.

Though I do clearly remember my mother pouring some tea carefully for a visitor, having forgotten to put tea
in the pot.

John also on one occasion, when his daughter and grandson were staying with us, made early morning tea for them, carrying it carefully into the bedroom, tea, milk and (salt) in the sugar basin.

Simon, the grandson, who was then about five, never let John forget it, and even now if  I offer him tea or coffee will say "without salt please".

At what stage does absent-mindedness become eccentricity, and does it matter?