OCD – Oh yeah, I have it.

So, an interesting quirk of my compulsive behaviors is that I am obsessed with even numbers. This means that when I eat candies, I have to eat the same quantity on each side of my mouth. If I end up with an uneven # of M & Ms at the end of the bag, I have to throw them away. And then add in the fact that there are different colors! One brown, one light brown, one red, each side. One green, one blue, each side. Mars would make me a very happy freak if they would stick to a pattern when filling their bags. Oh, and Mike and Ike’s! There are never enough green candies to eat more than half of a box.



This even number compulsion extends to every corner of my consciousness. Take for example my freakish need to have the TV volume set to a level divisible by 5. 25, 30, 35. My TV likes odd #s, so it can take me a minute or two to get the volume to land on 30, which then insites the ire of my equally OCD son. FM radio makes me insane! All those odd #s! I usually prefer to leave it on NPR and switch the display to clock setting so I don’t have to see it. That or I just pop in my iPod and try to forget about it.

It’s not an easy life for us freaks, but at least some of us have amusing quirks that redeem us instead of controlling us.