Stay Out Of Trouble – Grope Locks Instead Of Girls
I’ve got problems just like you. I worry about my work, my finances, my relationships…typical stuff. But what catches me off-guard is when I get a problem I wasn’t expecting. At least with a crummy job or marriage, you can say that other people have gone through the same thing. But what happens when you run smack into an obstacle that seems like it was tailored just for you? You know how it is. It feels like you’re being singled out. It’s like playing Duck Duck Goose, except that when you’re the goose, you chase divorce papers around the circle while your wife tongues your friend.
In my case, it’s delayed karma. When I was in third grade, I once made fun of another student who always had to wash his hands before joining his class in the lunchroom. I guess the Greek god of slow and ironic punishment decided I needed to learn a lesson, because now I have an obsessive need to make sure doors I use are locked. I just wonder what took Jerk-icles so long to curse me. I guess he was waiting until I lowered my guard long enough. You know me – I’d confiscate your erection if I thought it was a security risk.
A little backstory behind this one. Hark back to 2004, when I was living in Pensacola, Florida as a junior in high school. By that time, I was an experienced hurricane survivalist. Florida’s a hot spot for some wicked storms, after all, and the street I lived on was even more vulnerable since it lived next door to a series of docks leading out into the bay. But that wasn’t enough to keep our family rooted during Hurricane Erin and Opal. (I think Dad’s reluctance to leave his computer was the primary cause there.)
So when Hurricane Ivan charged on through the Panhandle, me and my mother stayed home. This, like many other decisions I made that year, proved to be a stupid idea. Ivan wreaked havoc across our entire street, flooding our house, knocking down trees and shutting off access to electricity for days. It wasn’t completely unbearable, though – not only did I discover that the MREs passed out by FEMA are damn tasty, but we bonded with our neighbors and built memories that I’ll treasure my whole life. That way, when I die, the memories will fetch a good price on Antiques Roadshow.
But I felt I had to stay on guard. Sure, the situation didn’t degrade into Mad Max levels, but I can get pretty paranoid. After I heard reports of people posing as FEMA workers to scam victims, I adopted my father’s old “lockdown” routine, where I’d check all the doors in our house to make sure everything was closed tight. Six years later, I’m still fussing over it. I know it’s stupid to check locks multiple times. I’m pretty sure they don’t undo themselves, unless you haven’t been paying them, in which case they’ll drop out the door and go to McDonalds without telling you. And yet, it’s very hard to quit. Why can I change other habits while this one holds a death grip on my soul?
Hmmm. Guess I’m just a sucker for great legs.
And it’s not just with the front and back door, either. Any door can fall victim to my curse. When I close a fridge door, I press in on the handle to make sure it’s sealed. When I exit a car, I tap in the door even after the lock clearly snaps in place. Even the trunk doesn’t get a free pass – I have to slap it down. I’m just afraid someone who got sent to the doghouse will find the open trunk and think it’s an upgrade.
But it’s not like I’m in dire straits or anything. At most, my little habit is annoying, but it hardly encompasses my life. Hell, I’ve got it easy. Did you know Marc Summers, the host of Double Dare, would redo his homework from scratch if he made a single mistake? I’m not sure if my brain can comprehend a life where EVERYTHING had to look perfect. But you know what they say about walking a mile in someone’s shoes. (When you work as a loan shark, you take whatever payments you can get.)
Still, I’m convinced this is a habit I can eventually stop. I’ve broken them before, and I feel I can break this one. Mind you, this habit is fortified within a spiked fortress defended by flaming griffons, but I’m willing to take the shot. Besides, I went to high school with a hydrogen bomb and helped it during algebra. I think it’s time to call in a favor.
What about you? Do you have any obsessive behaviors?
Related posts:
Does avoiding human contact on the very high chance someone will be significantly less intelligent than me count as an obsessive behavior?
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Matt Willard Reply:
February 11th, 2010 at 12:17 PM
No, but it makes you feel better, you come off as pretty weird that way :V
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The Geek Lord Reply:
February 11th, 2010 at 4:30 PM
Well I’m fairly certain everybody guessed I’m weird around the time I started walking around campus with a drill hanging from my neck. I’m still waiting for an opportunity to start spouting stuff about manliness and piercing the heavens.
Yes, we’re all thinking THAT now.
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I feel the need to check around my house and outside if I hear any kind of noise, I think it started when a thunderstorm caused a tree limb to fall near our house, also escaping from a tornado in oklahoma to go back to missouri from a trip to mexico.
Here’s something odd, in the summer of 2004, my family and I went to Pensacola right before a hurricane and left just before it struck the whole place.
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Matt Willard Reply:
February 15th, 2010 at 12:08 PM
Well, I’ll be. Maybe you escaped Ivan!
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i have to check my t.v every so often because my t.v can aparently turn its self off, you cann tell its off by remote when theres a red light on the t.v but i had NO batteries in my house at all, so the remote was unusable! i was like WTF???
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If I hear any music, my legs twitch.
Then I have the urge to start moving.
And I pace.
A lot.
But it helps me think for some reason, I’ve been hit with great ideas from songs that I pace too.
It’s just so annoying to have to move when I get an idea or hear a song that causes me to think of an idea.
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Whenever I tap my fingers randomly, I feel the urge to make sure my other fingers have been tapped an equal amount of times as well. I didn’t want to make them feel like I favoured one over the other.
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Matt Willard Reply:
March 19th, 2010 at 5:16 AM
Fingers get pretty offended about that kind of thing.
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DB Cheerios Reply:
April 14th, 2010 at 2:12 AM
@mapellen,
I used to do the same thing. That’s also the reason when I joined a bowling league I would only have one ball cause I would think the other one would be jealous and not get me a strike.
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