When my son was young he was given a fairly uncommon diagnosis on the autism spectrum (PDD-NOS, which I came to think of as meaning "no clue what's up, but he ain't normal"). As a result of the diagnosis, for a number of years I was fairly active in the autism community in Toronto, even though in retrospect any autism-related diagnosis seems inappropriate for him. I suspect the world of autism has changed in the years since then, but one of the characteristics I recall being from those early days was "perseverating", and whatever the actual meaning is, I understood it to mean feeling compelled to do certain things repeatedly or even ritualistically.
So when I found myself at a Walmart at 7 am on a workday because I couldn't find any small glass bottles of Coke in the local grocery stores and my shopping app told me Walmart had some, that was perseverating. And why was I looking for glass bottles of Coke? Because back when my son's Coke passion began, I somehow got the bright idea of putting a small glass bottle of Coke in his Christmas stocking. And here we are, roughly 25 years later, and I'm still doing it. Also in the Christmas stocking? An orange. Why? Because my mother did that. Why did she? Because she was British, and from a working class family, and in her childhood an orange was an unparalleled treat. And why do I wrap small trinkets in tissue paper (not Christmas wrapping paper) for placing in said stockings? Because she did that too, although I don't really know why. And why do the stockings go on the end of each child's bed? Same answer, although how she had the patience to wait for 5 unruly children to fall asleep on Christmas Eve I have no idea.
So I have to ponder this - why is a behaviour that we "normal" people do, with no more logical reason than tradition, considered perfectly acceptable, while behaviours that people with autism or other disabilities do without apparent logical reason considered a pathology that needs to be fixed?
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