[Xerox9213]

My odd claim to fame which is hard to garner praise for is that when I was a kid I always followed a certain pattern when I did something on a left or right foot. I always tried to even it out. So if I pinched my left toes, then I would do my right. But then I would undo that by going right then left. And then I would undo that by undoing the entire thing: right left left right. And the pattern went on:

LRRLRLLRRLLRLRRL…

and so on. It seemed easy enough to remember because you would just undo what you did last.

A few decades later and I learn that’s the Thue Morse word (1) which has many interesting properties like being overlap free. Unfortunately it didn’t give me any kind of advantage when studying combinatorics on words. Just a weird “wait… where have I seen this before?” moment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thue%E2%80%93Morse_sequence

[_nivlac_]

I did the exact same thing, due to a feeling of wanting to "even" things out between right and left. Blew my mind that it was a known pattern; after watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prh72BLNjIk&t=549s

I'm always reminded that we are all more alike than we realise :)