I'm the Askew Police

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Second Half of the New Year Day
National Tom Sawyer Days
UN International Day of Cooperatives
Anniversary - Battle of Gettysburg
Anniversary - First Postage Stamp
Anniversary - First US Zoo
Anniversary - Medicare
Anniversary - Zip Codes Inaugurated
Birthday - Diana, Princess of Wales
Canada Day (Canada)
Half-Year Day (China)
Independence Day (Burundi)
Independence Day (Rwanda)
Republic Day (Ghana)
Tour De France (France)

 

One of the clothes jobs came through! I got the job at Can I Offer You A Coke Classic Fashions because my mother, my aunt, and to a lesser extent 妹 are all frequent customers at this store, and the salesladies just love ’em.  Nepotism is definitely the way to go.

 

I seem to be really good with people.  I don’t know why, since often I am reclusive, but apparently I know exactly how to be sincere enough that people actually think I mean it.  (The thing is, that’s a good trait to be able to fake, and all the people I’ve worked for think I’m just a darn good actor.  But the thing with me is that I don’t really fake it. Even if I am not sincerely interested in your stories about your vacation, I sincerely care about your feelings and will thus listen politely because it’s obviously important to you.) It is not so much that I can be civil to people, it’s just that it’s part of the Rules that govern my obsessive-compulsive lifestyle.  I do not have a shoulder angel or devil. What I have on my shoulder is an iron-willed middle-management bureaucrat with an encyclopedic knowledge of all 27 volumes of Amelia’s Deep-Seated Rules Of Behavior, and that governs everything I do. I am not ethical or friendly, because those would imply a choice on my part.  Civility and good behavior are simply in The Rules, and I simply follow The Rules.

 

I have this theory that most people are obsessive-compulsive to a certain extent.  Everyone has a set of Rules that govern their behavior, Rules so deep-seated that they don’t even notice them.  Society wouldn’t work without at least a marginal amount of self-imposed Rules. But the problem is that nobody’s set of Rules is the same as anyone else’s.  Most people share a lot of the big Rules—the foundations of society. Some don’t and have an entirely different set—there are all sorts of possible reasons why—and this means that most of us think they’re crazy, like sociopaths or schizophrenics.  They have Rules, too, and often very strict ones, but their Rules counter the ones most of us share.

 

And then there are little Rules, too. Silly ones. Ones that are only rational because they are part of our innate need to have order and to find patterns.  Come on, admit it, you have some sort of special Rule for, say, how to eat an Oreo, or which brand of shampoo you use, or which seat you sit in in the car or in class, or which side you sleep on, or something equally pointless. You may or may not do this yourself, but I’m willing to bet you at least know several people who will arrange their M&Ms by color before eating them.

 

I think the degree of obsessive-compulsion in a person means the degree to which they must follow The Rules they set for themselves, and how much stock they put into each Rule. People who are less obsessive-compulsive—average people—can prioritize their Rules. But as you go up the OCD scale, you find that all of The Rules start to take on the same importance, so that on the farthest side the Coke Must Come In A Can Rule* is just as important to follow as the You Cannot Lie Rule.

 

I myself have more weird rules than the average person, I think—the closet door must be closed if I want to sleep, Earl Grey tea must go in the blue mug and Hibiscus Paradise in the green one, the letter J is ALWAYS PURPLE—and so I consider myself borderline obsessive-compulsive. I can counter it somewhat, though, and slightly prioritize these rules as rather less important than some of the others. But I still follow them all when I can, and I do feel better for it. This works for the civility thing, too, so that my motives for being polite have more to do with my own reward than with theirs.

 

At least this also means that I really like steaming clothes and getting all the wrinkles out. Which is good, since that’s a lot of what my job is. Haha! My shoulder bureaucrat is pleased!

 

 

*This is actually one of mine. Coca-Cola is only correct if it’s in an aluminum can.  Bottles or fountains are not where Coke should come from and I will refuse any sort that does not come in a big red can.

Comments

[die-monster.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way about certain civility rules. I can blather about the Celtic Code of Hospitality all I like, but when you get right down to it, the way I treat people is just another OCD thing about me. And I agree, we're all OCD to an extent, me and various friends have reached that conclusion more than once.

For your entertainment:
A brief and incomplete list of my rules-
-The left shoe MUST go on first. My day will be filled with a sense of foreboding otherwise.
-Cuffs and hems are NEVER to be turned up. Don't MAKE me turn them down for you.
-I cannot, cannot, CANNOT eat in the dark. Or with fans on. Especially not both.
-People may not walk behind me. I will pull an Orpheus and look back constantly, convinced they are no longer there. And it just makes me really nervous.
-I can't listen to music that isn't on random. I also can't skip a song once it's started playing. Any song playing should ideally be allowed to finish, and I should never know what the next song is.
-I must sleep with my feet towards the door. Any other way just feels weird. Actually all bedrooms are oriented this way that I've ever seen, I think it's universal.
-I can't sleep without being under blankets, no matter how hot it is (and summer in Arkansas in a metal trailer with bad A/C, is HOT) but I will feel exposed otherwise.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Oh, lord, yes, I'm with you on people walking behind you. I will slow down to a crawl so that people will pass me.

As for sleeping, my rule is that the bed MUST have its head in a corner of the wall, so I'm, I don't know, protected from two angles or something. And there is always a blanket. Even if it's just over my waist.

I think a lot of these are leftover instincts that some people can ignore better than others.

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting age related comment about Coke in a Can.

Originally, Coke came in curvy bottles, out of a machine which only showed the caps. You put your quarter in, and pulled the bottle straight out through the metal gate. When Coke started appearing in cans (way before plastic bottles) we were of the mind set that Coke only came in bottles. Glass ones, with the name painted on individually, instead of on a big red flag with a 'swoosh' under it.

That was the only way it tasted good to us. Cans were..eech. Metallic.

;)

This comment brought to you by the "omgz0rz you're old!" committee.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Those old bottles are really cool. Sometimes I'll accept a Coke from a glass bottle because I just think they're neat, but even then there's something about the way the can is set up that feels more "natural," young person that I am. And not the old tough cans, but the new ones whose walls are thinner than the letter I in this comment.

[viizou.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine, who is in his early twenties now, has been insisting for many years that Coke tastes better from a glass bottle. However, his father worked for Pepsi, so perhaps that was his way of rebelling (Pepsi doesn't make glass bottles, do they?)

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Coca Cola used to be only correct if it came in an aluminum can. But then I discovered the coke that came in bottles also had caffiene. SO YUM.

P.S. For me the closet door is always open because otherwise, how can I tell if there are monsters in the closet?

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Schizophrenics don't really have a different set of rules; some of their brain cells fire randomly, so they get "perceptions" that aren't really perceptions, like hallucinations and delusions.

Sociopaths have their own rules, but they are almost entirely self-centered. They never internalize the rules of society, but they do learn what they are so they can fake it: for a sociopath, social interaction is acting.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Well, for the schizophrenics those misfires can cause them to build a set of rules around it, which does make total sense to them but to anyone else makes none whatsoever. But yeah, I'm with you ~ a lot of people probably would come up with a similar set if they had the same hallucinations.

I always thought the possibility of sociopathy was really bizarre and creepy. The idea of not having empathy is, to me, entirely incomprehensible. I've tried to write them, but most of my villains wind up having understandable motives and layers. I only ever managed to do one proper sociopath. And acting differently than what you are is equally difficult for me to grasp.

I often wonder what proportion there is of sociopaths to actual sociopathic killers. We all hear about murderous sociopaths ~ is that the only kind? What would the life of a sociopath who didn't kill people be like? Oh, I've wandered onto a tangent ...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

Obsessive-compulsive behavior is always an interesting topic for me. Left shoe on first, specific way of eating just about everything, specific numbers of steps to take between specific heres and theres, switch between left and right hands in-between every paddle strike in table tennis, sleeping on my side with my hand on my ear - reading every single entry and comments thread on my friends' list, come to think of it. o_o

Some Rules can be changed, but it's not fast and it's not easy. I had ablutomania, i.e., obsessive-compulsive hand-washing (I'm talking about probably between 50 and 100 times a day), for eight years before finally over-coming it just last winter. In the end, yeah, it was only a matter of really telling myself to stop caring basically overnight, only it took me eight years to get to a point at which I could do that.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I do think it's interesting, and it applies to more people than you'd think. My dad and I both have very specific formulae for how to arrange dinner on our plates. We argue about whether the turkey goes at ten or twelve o'clock ~ almost as pointless as my arguments with my mom about what color the number 5 is (BROWN, dammit!). And of course, there will be no mixing of different parts of the meal.

I changed one, where I was afraid to sleep with my door closed because then I wouldn't have an escape route for, you know, anything that requires one. Now I can sleep with it closed. Fortunately, I've never had one as bad as your ablutomania, but I do know what you mean. I'm glad you changed that one.