I have some questions about OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). Well, one, mainly. Do you always just have it, or can it develop late in life? ‘Cause I think I’m getting it.
It’s all been coming on over the last few weeks. I actually do a decent job of getting my lawn mowed every week; I cleaned the basement; I cleaned the garage (thereby refilling the basement with useless crap, although the basement has been avenged: my mother made me take about 300 boxes of various crap from her house, most of which is now in the garage); I’ve been doing things like cleaning bathrooms, doing laundry, things like that.
Even stranger, I’m now an absolutely stickler for personal cleanliness. Time was, if I was at home, and I had to pee, I usually wouldn’t bother to wash up. It wasn’t like I had peed on my hands, or anything! Now I wash my hands every time I do anything, and I feel vaguely repulsed by others who don’t. Amusingly terrifying anecdote: I enter the work bathroom to “drain the dragon” (see also: “quench the urinal cake fire”), and a pair of middle-aged gentlemen are there ahead of me. One of them completes his urinary task and commences washing his hands, and the other apparently has a larger bladder, so he takes a little longer.
He then turns to his buddy, announces loudly, “Well, Bob, I didn’t pee on my hands!” and walks out of the bathroom without washing. (I think he put his willy away first, but I have no proof of this.) I almost bit my tongue bloody trying to avoid screaming, “Yes, but you still touched your filthy ‘old-man’ wang, you foul, foul hottentot!”
I guess what I’m saying is, if you come to my office building, and you meet up with a pair of guys in their mid-to-late fifties, one of whom is tall and named Bob, the other being short and kinda moley: DO NOT SHAKE THE SHORT GUY’S HAND. Or at least spray some Lysol on him first.
As an added bonus, a sign on an upstairs water-cooler had me thinking twice, even three times (making a total of 6 total actual thought processes for me that day, a new record): “If you fill your water bottle, please do it without touching the bottle to the tap. It is unsanitary.” My initial instinct was to lick the tap good and germy and share the Hearnovirus with the rest of the building, but then I thought, “Ew. I’ve been rubbing my water bottle against something to which other people have touched theirs. Meaning my lips have been like 4 steps removed from the mouth of someone who may or not have washed his hands last time he successfully didn’t pee on them.”
Then I threw up in my mouth a few times. Now I’m much more careful to not let my bottle touch the tap. Admittedly, this means water tends to get everywhere, much to the chagrin of the person that comes in for coffee, slips in my spillage and demolishes his nose on the refrigerator door, but if that’s the price someone else has to pay, I’m more than willing to let them pay it. Plus, I plan to post a little sign on the water cooler that reads “Whichever of you jerks gave me dysentery: I will find you. And then I will cut you.” You know, just to keep everybody honest.
Also, I’ve gotten into the habit of putting the toilet cover down before flushing anything ’cause I’m told that fecal matter can spray out and onto your toothbrush, the thought of which caused me to interrupt this sentence twice (right after “fecal” and “spray”) and put my head between my knees.
