30: Obsession
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So Paul, let's begin this week's show this way. I want you to explain to me everything you had to go through in order to see the movie Independence Day. I had to get something to eat. I had to get not only a Coke but also a juice from somewhere outside of the movie theater and not open it up. I didn't want to have it open. I wanted to have it sealed and have a straw with a paper straw cover around it. I had to sit on the aisle, had to leave the theater during the previews, and then come back in just as the movie was about to start. I had to wash my hands a couple of times, of course, just so, you know, in case I had to operate or anything. That happens a lot in your modern theaters. Who's already scrubbed? I sort of know that there were, you know, that I had certain work sometimes when I was watching a movie or, you know, really doing anything. But for some reason, I just realized that it was going a little too far. That these rituals that I developed were just a little bit out of control. Welcome, WB EZ Chicago. It's this American life of my red glass. Each week on our program we choose a topic. We bring you a variety of different kinds of stories, documentaries, radio monologues, short stories, found to tape anything we can think of. Today's program, what happens when a little idea becomes a compulsion? What happens when it starts to control you? Our program today in four acts, four different stories, and joining me for this hour is Paul Tuff, who actually holds a job, doesn't just go to theaters, freaking out his fellow patrons. Paul Tuff, an editor at Harper's Magazine in New York, and a contributing editor to our show as well. Paul has been thinking and talking to a lot of people about this subject of small obsessions and compulsions. And can I just say that your story in the movie theater, I mean those are pretty small things. All those things seem pretty innocent. They are, they are. None of them are really out of control. I guess one of the reasons they sort of hit me is just because I've been thinking about this a lot. And what struck me about it was that feeling where suddenly you think this could become a lot worse. I mean there are people who, okay I was washing my hands a couple of times before a movie. Movie theaters are kind of dirty places. But you know there are people out there who wash their hands hundreds of times a day. And what separates me from that person? A couple hundred times. There's a numeric number we can assign to that difference. But I had this feeling there in the movie theater that you know it could happen at any point. So Paul among the cavalcade of stories that you've brought in to play for us over the course of the hour about obsession. I know some of them are serious and some of them are lighter. What do you want to start with? One of the first people that I talked to is actually someone that I know really well an ex-girlfriend of mine named Jillian. And what I wanted to talk to her about was her obsession with the number two. When she was a kid just like any kid she had you know a favorite number, favorite color. And her favorite number was two. But it became a lot bigger than that. So I started being very preoccupied with doing things twice. If I for example dropped keys I would then lean down and pick them up but before I actually picked them up I would probably drop them again. Like really close the floor so no one would quite know what I was doing. But I'd be very aware that I was fulfilling some sort of two obligations. Her obligations weren't all-consuming but they were somewhat laborious. At the dinner table or in class she'd say something and then she'd have to repeat it under her breath to make a two. If she made a phone call and the person that she was calling wasn't there she'd have to let the phone ring an even number of times. She started to see the whole world as being divided into things that were even. Things that were on the side of two and things that were odd. You know I had a favorite my favorite color was blue and I also had to fantasy that blue was basically even color. So it all seemed
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