I definitely had OCD tendencies when I was a kid. For years, if the right side of my head itched and I scratched it, I also had to scratch the left side. If my left thigh brushed against the arm of the couch as I was walking by, I would have to turn around and brush the right one. That fixed it. If I didn’t create a tactile mirror image, I felt off-balance.
And I can’t even actually say that, because I never didn’t fix it. I guess I should say, if I hadn’t, I knew that I would have felt off-balance. (I was self-conscious enough to know this behavior was weird, and I didn’t share it with anyone until a year or two ago.)
And then one day, I made a choice to stop. Just like when I chose to like bananas because they were the only fruit you could reliably find in NYC bodegas. Or when I decided to stop hating the guitar lick in “The Pina Colada Song” because I liked the rest of the song so much and I wanted to listen to it all the time.
Yeah, I just said to myself, “Self, this balance shit is a mite crazy. You gotta quit it.”
Sure wish I could do that with the other aspects of my insanity.
Anybody want to share their particular brand of nuttiness?