OCD or Death

What was it about all this checking plugs palaver? Three, four, five, six times before he could get out the door. Then the key in the door to be checked three times, then often multiples of three times. Sometimes it took him ten, fifteen minutes to go through all these rituals. If he wasn’t careful he’d be down the stairs, and halfway along the street and have to come back and do it all again convinced that if he didn’t he’d have missed something and the place would burn down in his absence.

For him though, these repetitive rituals haven’t always been about buildings burning down because of unchecked plugs. He’d had superstitions since he was a child; doing things in threes had always been important. Fours were out; sevens were sometimes OK (although not now his mum was in her seventies and doing anything in sevens could signify her demise in his superstitious mind).

Four was and is the big taboo number. The number four had signified the risk of his dad’s death for as long as he could remember. He’d have to add five of whatever it was, counting railings or touching walls, to make it nine which meant there was no chance of his dad dying until he was in his nineties which would be OK (he’d died aged seventy-one so all this trouble had been taken in vain; he’d obviously let a rogue seven slip in there somewhere).

He’d met a friend once who suffered from almost the exact same thing; they used to wind each other up with it. In the pub one night he’d proclaimed that if his friend didn’t perform a goat dance three times in the middle of the pub, in full view of everyone then his dad would suffer a fatal heart attack. He thought about this for a few seconds then promptly complied.