As anybody who has been to my shop knows I do tend to strike up conversations with my customers and the one I was talking to on this particular Saturday admitted freely and happily to being an OCD sufferer.

Later, in bed, I was thinking about this and realised I had suffered the same thing in my younger days. Not just a question of not stepping on the cracks between the paving but counting them as I went, often into the hundreds.. If I accidentally touched something I would repeat this at least five times. This reminded me of watching tennis where each player appears to bounce the ball a specific number of times prior to throwing it up to serve.

I also developed rituals to be followed before going out and upon my return home. Thinking back it seems that children build up these rituals to provide some order and stave off worries about the future. In the main this does not work as children cannot think  as adults or appreciate the pressures their parents may be experiencing

Luckily it never struck me as being abnormal to count how many buses I could see from the Railway Station or how many carriages made up a passing train. One wonders if all children do this as a stabiliser or if one was, actually, a little weird.

My customer's main obsession was with his large and academic CD collection. He became irate if one CD had been misplaced and would probably nor be able to sleep until this was corrected. Thinking this was a little unreasonable I then realised how irritating it is when I find books replaced on the wrong shelf.  This can result in my telling a customer I no longer have the title needed for an assignment only to find it , sometimes in a different room, at a later date. I frequently pass people on the street closing their door with a firm clunk and then pushing against it to ensure it is closed. I have also heard of people arriving in Valletta and  returning home immediately due to doubts about whether or not they had turned off something in their home.

It appears many of us have these foibles but are not conscious of them. I do however sympathise with severe cases where people are driven to wash their hands sixty or more times a day. On reflection I feel most of us would admit to a minor problem but feel this would put us into a majority. This equates with normality.

 

Liz Groves runs Island Books in Mosta, one of Malta's last independent bookshops, situated in Mosta