This is something I don’t often admit, but confession is good.

I feed my dog chicken off my plate. While at the dinner table.

With my fork.

Then I continue to use it.

I also feed him ice cream with my spoon.

This may sound unsavory, but it’s tame when you consider I let him lick me on the mouth for a minute or more.

This has got me thinking about other unacceptable behaviors of mine. Everyone has a few, and we usually keep them to ourselves.

But today, I’ll come clean, under the following category.

Things I do that are out of line but I can’t help it:

•I stir sugar into my coffee with a pen.

•When a telemarketer tells me he’s looking for me, I sometimes say, “I’m sorry, he died.”

•I’ll leave the kitchen until I hear someone else emptying the dishwasher.

•If I pop out the last piece of Kleenex, I’ll put it back in so I don’t have to be the one to replace the empty box.

•When wiping the surface of a table, I gather the crumbs into a neat pile, then sweep them into thin air.

•I can go through one of those 12-piece flat packs of Trident or Orbit gum in 12 minutes.

•And I put the chewed pieces back in the bubble containers, which is a problem when I leave an unfinished pack where a family member might pick it up to have one.

•I dip swordfish in ketchup. But only when there’s a potato on the plate, so that’s just half-out-of-line.

•I have combed my hair with a fork.

•If a coaster is so far away I have to lean forward in my chair to reach it, I’ll put the glass on the wood table instead.

•Because it’s a hassle to put toothpaste on the brush, I squeeze it directly into my mouth.

•Same with Ready-Whip while eating ice cream.

•I hate the way plastic measuring cups on cough medicine bottles get gooey, so I just swig it.

•I swig Pepto-Bismol, too.

•When I fall behind on e-mail, I start answering the latest arrivals first, leaving the more deserving earlier letters for later.

•I never take the top newspaper from the stack at a store.

•Sometimes, on planes, I’ll brace my knees against the seat back of the person in front of me so they can’t lean back.

•In the same way, though I do it subtlety, I refuse to yield the shared armrest.

•I’ve eaten watermelon in the shower so you can get your whole face in it.

•When visiting, I look in other peoples’ medicine cabinets.

•Occasionally, if it fights me, I’ll use my hand to brace unsteady Tupperware on the shelf, then quickly close the cabinet door.

•If I put on a dress shirt and find a cuff is missing a button, instead of changing shirts, I’ll tape it.

•Rather than butter Melba toast or French bread, I’ll rake them across the top of a margarine tub.

•If I spill something that stains a couch cushion, I’ll flip it rather than own up.

•I step in the garbage can to compress it so I don’t have to bag it up just yet.

•I drink from the faucet.

•As well as the orange juice carton.

•I leave subscription cards that fall out of magazines on the couch.

•If I get gas on my fingers after a fill and there’s no alternative, I’ll wash off my hands in the station’s windshield-cleaning basin.

•As for that guy who leaves sugar grains all over the serving station where people put cream in their coffee — that’s me.

And finally:

•If there are two of us splitting a shrimp cocktail of five pieces, I’ll take the third without even asking.

To give myself credit, there are some standard out-of-line things I do not do. For example, I’m not one of those people who starts eating items they are buying while still at the grocery store. I don’t settle into a trance in the high-speed lane going 45 miles per hour. And I don’t have a pop song as my ring tone.

But I admit to the rest of the list.

There are still more, but I’m late for something. The dog is waiting for his . . . my . . . dinner.

mpatinkin@projo.com