Thursday, April 13

Bit of Truth: I have some compulsive tendencies.

1. Cans in the pantry are right-side-up and have all their labels facing out. So does every Pepsi and bottle of Sobe at work. So might the drinks at Maverick if I’m really bored.

2. Skittles etc. If there are ten purple, eight yellow, nine red and four greens I will eat six of the purple, four of the yellows and five of the reds so that there will be a perfect four of each. Yet if there are twelve orange and eleven greens and three of the other colors I will eat all of the lesser colors and one of the orange so that I leave eleven of both orange and green.

3. You can often find me walking around the house with a plastic blue bowl full of Cheerios. However, there isn’t any milk in it. I eat one out at a time. And though it may appear like I am just eating ANY one at a time, I am not. I eat the “abnormals”, the different ones. Ex. The huge ones, the tiny ones, the skinny ones, the darker ones. And I eventually end up with a handful of PERFECT Cheerios in the bottom of my dusty bowl.

4. Peanut M&M’s. I am even strange enough to combine my tendencies. I do the skittle thing with M&M’s, and I eat the abnormals too. Some peanuts aren’t as perfectly shaped as the others. And if the little white M is missing or faded, that sad candy faces the same doom as its funny-looking cousins.

5. Bill-facing. In my wallet all the money is facing the same direction and they go from the twenties in the back down to the ones in the front. And none of them have folded corners. The till/drawer at work most certainly MUST be faced at all times. If it isn’t I will fix them immediately. Even though I have trained a dozen people to run the register and stressed the importance and the need to have the bills faced they still don’t do it. It really shouldn’t bug me, but it does. I do not get upset at them or anything like that; I will simply spend the time to face them.

NOTE: Being prevented from doing these things does not cause me anxiety. If someone offered me ten bucks to mess up the registers drawer and leave it that way, I would not have a panic attack. It would be very possible for me to not do any of these. The thought of having the drinks at Quiznos all facing backwards does not interfere with my other thoughts. Therefore I don’t have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

5 comments:

Mrs. McGee said...

In fact, I wouldnt be too surprised to discover that many of you have similar behaviors that could be thought of as compulsive. Vince will go out of his way to fix crooked picture frames. He will even fix rugs if they arent parellel with the walkways. If flowers are unevenly distributed he might pick a few :)

Anonymous said...

Ok, I admit, I do the Skittles and M&M thing, too. And when my mind isn't occupied, I tend to straighten money and their corners, too. Actually, I tend to straighten and make a lot of things straight and parallel. But like you, I can live without doing these things. :)
-H.bear

Pavlov Stowardi said...

I might just have to create my own list like this... If only I could think about in what order I should type them out.

Heidi said...

Everybody has complusions of some sort - it's when they get out of hand and you CAN'T live with things being any other way that it becomes a disorder.

Princess Consuela Banana Hammock said...

I can't leave the house with out checking to make sure that every threatening appliance is unplugged.