Gray had horrible decision paralysis when he was a tween. Obviously stemming from his trauma about choosing to abandon Ur and Lyon to fight Deliora when he wasn’t read, that decision having cost him two of his most important relationships as a child. Ultimately it affects small decisions he has to make as he gets older, he no longer has any trust in his own decisions.
He wouldn’t choose where to go, what to drink, what to eat, how to wear his hair or where he would sit. He usually just let someone from fairy young ,preferably Cana, drag him along to whatever they were doing and piggyback off their decisions.
For jobs he’d usually subtly hint that he wanted direction
“This is a pretty good quest, pays well.” Said in an overly loud tone attempting to get feedback. If given a positive reaction he’d take the quest and use the suggested mode of transportation, if he recieved a negative or none response he’d walk away from the quest board, abandoning his attempt for a quest, or pick up another one and cycle through the process again.
Of course the guild picks up on this and they play along. Gray isn’t prone to asking for help, it more like he’ll herd you into helping him without asking then make it seem like it was your idea all along. Naturally the guild did everything they could to help, it was easier to just take initiative and let Gray follow them.
Gray does slowly grow out of it, realizing that no matter who is making the decision bad things can and will still happen, as evidenced by Lisanna’s “death”. Lisanna and Elfman followed Mira’s words to a Tee, religiously following the rules she set with them while pushing boundaries where there was wiggle room and something bad still happened. Obviously Gray doesn’t blame Mira or Elfman but this is the kickstart he needs to fully break away from his paralysis.
Over the years it becomes something less sad and more funny. Gray turns into a deeply indecisive person at truly inconvenient times.
Cana wants to go out clubbing?
He can’t figure out what to wear, if his shoes match, whether to straighten his hair or wear it as is. Every one of their hangs out goes as follows:
Waits for Cana to complete her look then randomly decides he hates his body.
Spends ten minutes complaining about how his face looks off in this shirt and deciding to change.
He cycles through ten different outfits before throwing his hands up and deciding not to go.
Cana then whoops his ass, throws an outfit at him, doesn’t let him look in the mirror once he’s ready and steals his house keys so he has to follow her.
Generally as Gray gets older he no longer has the paralysis only the indecision which is at times inconvenient (other times hilarious) but not life threatening and he can do things on his own.