Everything You Need to Know about OCD, Scrabble, and Life

One evening, years ago, my friend Lucy's phone rang, and the name showing in the phone's little window was "Ma."     

Image: Teece Aronin

"Hello?" 

When Lucy answered the phone, she heard distant conversation and could tell that people were playing cards - gin, to be exact. Lucy knew the voices well; they belonged to her mother, Darlene, her Aunt Zelda, and her sister, Jo-Jo. Darlene and Zelda were sisters. 

Her mother's phone was likely at the bottom of her bag, and something in the bag had likely butt-dialed Lucy. Assuming that were true, the women were probably at Jo-Jo's or Aunt Zelda's. If they were at Jo-Jo's, they were gathered around Jo-Jo's glass-top wrought iron dining table, always splattered with wet rings because Jo-Jo didn't know what a coaster was. 

If they were at Aunt Zelda's, they were sitting at the 1940's-era enamel kitchen table that had been Lucy's grandmother's. The table had caused a huge fight between Darlene and Zelda when Darlene accused Zelda of practically snatching it out from under the bowl of oatmeal their mother had nosedived into when she stroked out during breakfast one day. Darlene had complained that the oatmeal, like the body, wasn't even cold yet.     

"Hello?"

More ghostly chatter.  

"Hel-lo!"

Lucy yelled at least five more times before the conversation sucked her into its weird spell. 

Darlene: Her therapist told her it was free-floating anx-XI-ety. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Imagine having your anxiety hovering around over your head all the time - like a big, black cloud.

Aunt Zelda: For God's sake, Darlene; that's not what it means. It just means that you're anxious for no real reason. Your adrenaline cells have stomped their foot down on the gas pedal and now the pedal's jammed. Don't you ever watch Dr. Phil?

Darlene: No, Zelda, I don't. I didn't have the good fortune of marrying a barber, and therefore I have to work during the day.

Aunt Zelda: Jackie is a much-in-demand hair stylist, and besides, there's always TiVo. 

Aunt Zelda had a way of sounding sage, droning, and boastful at the same time. 

Jo-Jo (referring to her husband): I think Billy has anxiety. I don't know if it's free-floating or on the ground, but he definitely seems anxious. Sometimes it drives me up the wall because I literally have to scream at him to snap him out of it. He has issues up the win-wang."

Darlene: That's yin-yang.

Jo-Jo: Win-wang, yin-yang, wherever they are, they're there.

Darlene: You know, there's all kinds of anxiety. There's the free-floating kind, and there's panic attacks, and there's ODC . . .

Aunt Zelda: Good God, Darlene; it's not ODC, it's O-C-D - obsessive-compulsive disorder. It can make you do things and think things you don't want to. The obsessive part is thoughts you can't stop thinking, and the compulsive part is things you can't stop doing. Some people have one or the other, and some have both. I read about it on the internet. 

Jo-Jo: I think I have OCD. I can't stop thinking I want to divorce Billy, and I can't stop myself from screaming at him.

Aunt Zelda: I knew a girl in high school who, when she got her driver's license, she found she had a compulsion for driving into potholes. I mean no one knew she had OCD - she just happened to share the whole pothole thing with me one day and asked me if I thought it was weird. Of course, I tried to be reassuring and said it seemed perfectly normal to me. She just couldn't stop herself whenever there was a pothole coming. She'd even purposely veer right into them. I always emptied my bladder first if she was going to be driving.

Darlene: I might've known her. Who was she?

Aunt Zelda: I'm not telling, but she's a therapist now, which just goes to show you can conquer your demons. 

Darlene: Come on, Zelda; what's her name?

Aunt Zelda: I said I'm not telling.

Darlene: Oh, screw you, Zelda.

Jo-Jo: You know, I hate it when the two of you talk to each other this way.

Aunt Zelda: Shut the fuck up, Jo-Jo.

Jo-Jo: Dammit, Aunt Zelda. I hate it when you swear.

Aunt Zelda: Oh, I'm sorry. Jo-Jo, shut the frig up. How's that?

Jo-Jo: Better.

Aunt Zelda: Gin!

Darlene: Zelda, you asshole!

Jo-Jo: Ma! What did I just say?

Darlene: "You said that to your aunt."

Jo-Jo: I think next time we should play Scrabble.

Aunt Zelda: I once played Scrabble with a man who was a master at the game. When he played the word BEARS for 72 points, I said that's amazing! And you know what he said? He said: "It's not the bears, it's where you put the bears."

Darlene: I'd like to tell you where to put the bears.

Jo-Jo: You know, what that man said - about the bears - that applies to a lot of things in life. 

Aunt Zelda: That it does, my dear niece, that it does.

After more helpless shouting to her mother, Lucy hung up and went to bed. The next day, when she told her mother what happened, her mother yelled at her for eavesdropping.

Whine, Wine, Paint, and Tulips

I'm going to one of those wine and paint parties with my friend, Penny. Penny's the one I told you about who was on hold waiting to straighten out an overage on a bill and decided to make breakfast while she waited. Then she got sidetracked by her dog who, like a lot of us, she talks to as if it were a person. When she realized she'd just left the billing people a voice mail saying, in a sultry voice, "Does Mama smell like bacon? Y  E  S, MAma smells like BAcon," she hung up and paid the bigger bill.

Graphic by Teece Aronin

More recently, Penny fell asleep with her phone open to Amazon.com. Three days later, a corn hole game arrived, a large, expensive corn hole game. Penny's two boys were thrilled that their mother had bought them such a cool gift when it wasn't either of their birthdays, so Penny didn't have the heart to return it. 

The latest on Penny and her amazing shopping phone is that she fell asleep cruising Groupon and rolled over on her phone enough times to buy "multiple" (she won't specify the exact number) "multiple" Groupon packages for a "wine and paint night with friends." 

If you're unfamiliar with the concept, these are evenings spent making your own painting based on an existing work by a "real" artist. You do this with other people, usually in bars or sometimes, shockingly, at art studios. And you do it while drinking.  

Penny called me yesterday after we'd just seen each other at our neighbor, LouAnn's salad-in-a-jar event, and we tried to figure out which of the paint nights she bought worked for both our schedules. But here's the thing: It's not just finding a night that works, it's finding a night where you like the painting you'll be copying. None of the dates that almost, sort of, kind of worked for both of us would leave us with paintings either of us would want to hang once we got home. Then Penny said they did have a really cute painting of tulips.

"Oh, I love tulips," I sighed.

"Yeah, me too, but it's scheduled for a night after all my Groupons expire. I'll find out who to call, and maybe they'll let us switch."

So Penny and I are hoping they'll let us come in, drink, and paint but only if it's tulips. This has me wondering what kind of paintings people come up with when they've been drinking. Never have I seen a posting on Facebook from someone raving, "Check out the painting I did at last night's wine and paint night! And get this: A gallery wants to show more of my work! Heather Witherspeer, we are definitely doing this again!"

I'm thinking I'll order a white wine so that if I'm tipsy and accidentally rinse my paintbrush in it, I'll know right away. 

Memory Like an Elephant

Some of us are prone to losing things. In my case, the things tend to be my phone, my keys, my car, my credit card. I don't know if what they say about elephants having great memories is true, but if it is, I want a memory like an elephant. 

Elephant on Stripes, copyright, Teece Aronin

I once wrote an entire blog post about losing my keys. My favorite part of writing that essay was recounting what actually came out of my mouth one of those times I was searching for them. I was going out for the evening with my old boyfriend, Prickly Pete when I realized my keys were missing. Frantically I dispatched the kids, whose complete buy-in to the cause was gained by shutting off the TV. As I opened and shut drawers, cupboards, closets and jewelry boxes, Prickly stood there, perplexed.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “Why don’t you just keep them in your purse?”

“What, are you nuts?” I hissed, “Then I’d never be able to find them!”

You know you’re getting desperate for material when you start quoting your own blog posts, especially the ones that make you look like a ridiculous screw-up.  

But I make a good point (twice): Losing things, even things that should be perfectly easy to track, happens; it happens to all of us - especially when we’re distracted or under stress.

There aren’t many stressors worse than divorce, and years ago, while in the middle of one, I lost a cell phone inside my car. It would ring out from some dark, unreachable, invisible recess, and not even my kids, elfin enough to be jammed between the seats, could see it, much less recover it.

Then there are the things you’d think are too big to misplace, for instance, the car you lose your cell phone in.

One day, gal-pal, Tina and I went shopping. Carrying our bags to the car, we realized that we had no idea where we’d parked because we weren't paying attention. As we made our way up and down aisle after aisle, row after row, I noticed we were being followed by a car. Every time we turned up another row of cars, he followed us. If we slowed down, he slowed down. When I stopped to tie my shoe, he stopped too. 

“Don’t look now,” I muttered from the side of my mouth, “but I think that car is following us.”

“You’re kidding!” Tina gasped.

“No, I’m not kidding. Just play it cool and don’t get close to it.”

The car pulled up even closer, and the passenger side window went down. Tina and I froze. A middle-aged man leaned toward us, and we held our breath.

“Excuse me, ladies. I was hoping to get your parking space, but you have no idea where your car is, do you?”

“No, sorry,” we confessed, and he drove away. The smart thing for him to do would have been to drive us around the parking lot until we found my car, and then take the space. Men just don't think sometimes. 

The other day, I lost a credit card – in the middle of the Lansing Convention Center. I was there for a conference with my boss and some coworkers. At the end of the day, hundreds of attendees were reconvened in the main ballroom. One of the event organizers stood at the podium, his image simulcast onto two huge screens on either side of the room.

“We have a lost credit card,” he announced. “Is there a Patricia Aronin in the room?”

“Oh, my word!” I yelped, jumping to my feet. “That’s me!” 

I started toward the front of the auditorium and several people shouted, “No! Behind you!” I turned around to see a woman walking toward me, reaching out to hand me back my card.

I sat down in the nearest empty seat, and heard a soft ping inside my purse. It was a text from my boss:

“Really?!?”

“I'm glad that tattoo artist was honest,” I texted back.

“Must notoriety follow you all of your days?” he asked.

Oh, I hope so.

Mercurochrome and the Mothers of Spring

All hail the Mothers of Spring! They were that fast, fierce, elite team of first responders always on the scene whenever their baby boomer kids bashed themselves up. The Mothers of Spring weren't real in the sense that they were a formally organized group - I made that up - but they were very real in every other way, especially to any child who ever cried out for hers or his while sorely in need of something akin to an Army medic.

Graphic by Teece Aronin

The Mothers of Spring are so named for the super-human ability to spring into action at a moment's notice, and also because, where I'm from, they were at their best during the spring season. You see, in my neck of the woods, the United States Midwest, Mothers of Spring shone brightest on those glorious days of April when it was warm in the sun and chilly in the shade. These are the days when children get so carried away by the beauty of it all, and too dazzled by the light, to look where they're going, and collide with something hard, like a section of buckled sidewalk. The Mothers of Spring deftly bandaged up their wounded warriors, first applying enough antiseptic to sterilize Lenny Bruce's toothbrush. And yes, Bruce did kiss his mother with that mouth.

Down through the annals of time the Mothers of Spring dabbed every boo-boo deemed in their mighty judgment as appropriate for it, with Mercurochrome.

Mercurochrome was a reddish-orange colored tincture that, once dried, became the reddish-orange skin stains kids of my generation wore as badges of honor. The cooler or more scrappy the kid, the more Mercurochrome stains he or she sported, or, conversely, the klutzier the kid was perceived as being. Baby boomers know what I'm talking about. 

In 1998, the Federal Drug Administration challenged the authority of the "Mothers of Spring, Mercurochrome Division" when it found that Mercurochrome was "not generally recognized as safe and effective. Mercurochrome wasn't flat-out banned, but it did get a lot harder to find. The comely flower-wreathed heads of the Mothers of Spring, especially those who were traditionalists or baby boomers, snapped up as one at this news, and many of the mommies yelled, "What the h€##?"

It turns out that Mercurochrome didn't get that first syllable, "merc," from nowhere. It got it because Mercurochrome contains mercury, an ingredient no self-respecting fish would be  caught dead with. While Mercurochrome didn't seem particularly hazardous when used as directed, it probably wasn't doing kids a whole lot of good. 

In an episode of I Hate Chris, the sitcom based on the childhood recollections of comedian Chris Rock, someone yells, "Chris got hit by a car!" and Chris' mother shouts, "I'll get the Robitussin!"

Robitussin is another must-have in the medicine cabinet of every good Mother of Spring.

Sprung

This is the weekend everyone in my neck of the world sprang ahead, meaning we turned our clocks ahead one hour to usher in that harbinger of spring, Daylight Saving Time.

Image, Teece Aronin.

So many things about this ritual confuse me, starting with the name. Is it Daylight Savings or Daylight Saving? I've thought about this quite a bit. For years, I thought it was Savings, but often see it written as Saving. Why this distinction bothers me I have no idea. If I dedicated as much thought to other aspects of time, I could discuss Einstein's theories more impressively at cocktail parties and maybe even get places when I'm supposed to - the latter being the bigger achievement despite not having a science-minded bone in my body and never getting invited to cocktail parties.

I'm also confused by whether I'm really saving anything valuable since I've just lost an hour of sleep and will be exhausted all week. Every winter I get all psyched up in anticipation of Daylight Saving(s?) Time only to get there and find myself haunting my house like a sleep-deprived ghost until my circadian clock catches up. 

And what exactly happens anyway? How did I just gain an hour of daylight and lose an hour of sleep? I mean, I get it - sort of - but it still seems counter-intuitive - or counter-clockwise - or counter-something. It just seems counter.

The first day of spring arrives close to the time we spring ahead. This is an event I've overblown in importance for years. Ever since I learned that spring commences at a specific time of day, say 12:57 p.m., I've gotten all excited about it every year, staring at the clock a few seconds ahead so that I'll know the very moment it begins, kind of like New Year's Eve but less depressing.  

Years ago, on the first day of spring, I was babysitting for a four-year-old. I told him that spring would arrive later that day and that we could go outside a minute before and do a 60-second countdown to welcome in the new season. I was careful to explain that we wouldn't actually see spring arrive, but still, it would be coming at the same time we were outside counting. We walked out of the house, and the conversation went like this: 

Me: Okay, here we are, out on the front porch. Spring will be here in exactly one minute. Are you ready to do the countdown with me?

Dougie: Yup!

Me: Okay, repeat after me: Sixty!

Dougie: Sixty!

Me: Fifty-nine!

Dougie: Fifty-nine!

Me: Fifty-eight!

Dougie: Fifty-eight!

Down and down, we counted until . . .

Me: Three!

Dougie: Three!

Me: Two!

Dougie: Two!

Me: One!

Dougie: One!

Me: Happy Spring!

Dougie: Happy Spring! . . . Now what?

Me: Now what what?

Dougie: Now what happens?

Me: Well, nothing happens.

Dougie: But where's the spring?

Me: It's here, right here, all around us.

Dougie: But nothing happened.

Me: Well, we didn't see anything happen. But something did happen.

Dougie: What?

Me: Spring.

Dougie: Where?

Me: Here. Everywhere. All around us.

Dougie: Oh, man, dat was a bummer. I goin' back in da house. 

So here we are again, having just gained light and lost sleep. It's too confusing for me to ever fully grasp, so this will be the year I just roll with it. By the way, I googled it, and it's Daylight Saving Time.

So now, I've lost an hour's sleep, and I've also lost my S. On the bright side, I have an extra hour of daylight with which to go find them. 

Sammy Davis, Jr. Went Swimming with My Mother (No He Didn't)

It was a mistake any white four-year-old could make in 1962.

When I was four, my mother told me a story about a civil rights activist she admired. He was a contemporary of Dr. Martin Luther King, and his name was James Farmer. He was among the bravest people who ever lived because he was one of the Freedom Riders who rode buses throughout the South, testing how successfully and safely Blacks could assert their newly established equal legal status on public transportation. 

This was a time when Jim Crow, separate but equal laws were in force in a de facto way, meaning that forcing blacks to the back of the bus was supposed to be illegal but was a stubbornly lingering practice. What Farmer did was dangerous, and Blacks were frequently beaten and lynched for this kind of "brazen" behavior. 

Long before he was a Freedom Rider, when my mother was a girl, Farmer visited the church camp she was attending, spoke with the children, and took them swimming in the lake. I was impressed by this and bragged to my Sunday school class that my mother had gone swimming with Sammy Davis, Jr. I loved Sammy Davis, Jr. I also lived in an all-white neighborhood since neighborhoods, even in the north where I was from, tended to be segregated then. The Black men in my life were either Sammy Davis, Jr. or Nat King Cole. I loved him, too.

When my Sunday school teacher fawned over my mother, telling her what I'd shared with the class and swooning over how thrilling it must have been to go swimming with Sammy Davis, Junior, my mother, who never swore - even in her mind - had a WTF moment. Immediately, she whisked me aside and abruptly demanded to know what that was all about.

Once I'd explained, and she saw how guileless I was, she laughed.

Then she had to explain things to my Sunday school teacher who probably thought James Farmer was a singer too.

But my Sunday school teacher wouldn't have had my excuse.

Remarkably Cute

As a culture, we seem to find children appealing from birth through about age nine. Then their enchanting qualities fly with them into a Bermuda Triangle for children. There is very little word coming from parents about the kids, very little word coming from the kids themselves, and very few of us asking their parents about them during this time.  

Image: Teece Aronin

This radio silence lasts until the children start achieving something beyond the usual infant-toddler milestones and gold stars from teachers on glue- and macaroni-slathered construction paper. If all goes well, at around age 17, children emerge from the Triangle with a free ride to Stanford, inclusion as an alternate on the U.S. Olympic Swim Team, or some other accomplishment guaranteed to save their parents thousands of dollars or land said child on the local news for reasons having nothing to do with drug busts or car thefts.   

Nine-and-a-half seems to be the cutoff for cuteness unless you have to be around the child, in which case you probably continue to find him cute, just not cute enough to comment on to anyone outside the family. Then, once he becomes a full-blown teen, he's not cute at all until the accomplishments phase kicks in at which time he is once again golden. 

Grandparents on the other hand, talk about grandchildren prior to the wee ones' conceptions. I doubt that even their own deaths silence proud grandparents for long. I'm imagining my mother in Heaven, chatting up the other angels over cards, and regaling them with stories about her grandson starting driver's ed and her granddaughter's horseback riding lessons.  

"She's learning - I forget what they call it - English style; that's it - you know, where they ride the horse and only have the reins to hang on with? I don't know how she does it, but she has me on extra angel duty, let me tell you. If she fell, it would be the second death of me. And of course, once Jon starts driving, I'll be watching one or the other of them all the time."

I'm not sure why children seem less "remarkable" - literally - once they approach their tween years, but many do seem to become sullen and anesthetized - temporarily. 

But whatever it is, we parents see them safely into the Triangle, cross our fingers, hope like hell, and proudly hail them when they come out the other side.