Blake and I are both in the kitchen. I am making my lunch and he is at his perpetual seat on one of the banquette cushions around the kitchen table. He sits there so often that the cushion is most certainly permanently indented. I open the refrigerator door to pull out the ingredients for the sandwich I am about to make. Then, I do a double take.
What looks strange in here? Ah! Two open boxes of yogurt tubes.
“Blake,” I begin. “Do you know why there are two boxes of the green yogurt tubes open?”
I feel stupid before the words are even out of my mouth. Why can’t I just keep myself quiet? I already know it has something to do with OCD. Do I have to rub it in? Or am I calling OCD out? It doesn’t matter, the words are already out.
“One of them fell…” he begins. Then he stops. “I know.”
His “I know” is a signal and an acknowledgement in one. He is acknowledging that his OCD got him to discard a perfectly good box of yogurt tubes just because they happened to fall out onto some “unsanitary” surface. The signal is: Go ahead, Mom. Put all the yogurt tubes in one box. I’ll eat them all and defy what OCD originally directed me to do.
I set both boxes of yogurt tubes onto the counter. One by one, I put the remaining tubes from one box into the other. Blake half watches, but, really, he’s already moved on. Within a day or so he has already eaten all the remaining yogurt. No mention of contamination; no washing rituals. Just eaten with the gusto of a 16-year-old male appetite.
OCD can be tricky. Sometimes the sufferer and family members have to call its bluff. Got-cha this time, OCD!
OCD In The Family 