Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: The Game
Now, you're going to need a few things to play this game, and you'd better get them all together right away, and arrange them neatly. You will need: a circular table (preferably wooden), one 20 oz. plastic cup (Solo, not a cheap store brand), a paper towel torn neatly along the perferations, three appropriately shined quarters, and a sheet of college-ruled notebook paper, creased vertically into perfect halves.
Alright, got all that? Great. Now what you need to do is place the cup exactly in the center of the table, with the paper towel directly underneath, square in front of you, with all four corner points directly pointing toward a chair.
No...no...wait, I said it needs to be in the center. My friend, that is several degrees away from the exact center of the table. Just move it slightly to the left...no. Now that's too far. Slide it just a little bit to the right on the paper towel and it'll be right in the middle of both of them. No...wait...no!
Let's come back to it later. For now, we'll just take all this off the table because I can't stand to look at it.
Next, you're going to need to take your piece of paper and...Hold on. Did you touch the table? With your right index finger? Okay, before we do anything else you're going to need to tap your left index finger on the same spot. And now, you need to tap both those fingers on that spot so that you'll have done it an even number of times. But, then again, two is a prime number, and we want this to work out to a round figure, so you'd better make it four. Oh, but five is the next one up, and that's half of ten...so...
Tap both fingers on the table ten times.
Oh, but then there's your middle finger, which is just as important as your index finger, and your thumb too. And of course your two other fingers. Better tap each of those on there ten times as well. I'll count for you.
Okay, with that out of the way, let's take our sheet of paper and...wait. Wait. How clean is that table? Has anyone eaten off of it? Ever? Perhaps spilled a morsel of food or, worse yet, dribbled a bit out of their cavernous bacteria-mouths?
This calls for a hand washing.
Thoroughly now, just keep scrubbing those hands, because there's no other way to get the germs off. As you scrub, I'm noticing that there's a hint of lime and rust in your sink, so that's going to have to be taken care of. Game be damned, get me some Comet, rubber gloves, a sponge with four sharp corners and a scrubbing bucket full of purified water out of a Brita filter.
Alright. After nearly 3 hours of preparation, I've cleaned the sink by scrubbing 50 times with each hand, and taken off my shoes and put them back on as I've entered the room again. Unfortunately, when I had my shoes off at one point I noticed that one of my socks had a slight hole in the big toe, so I had to run to Sears and buy a pack of new ones, which, horribly, only came in packs of six, so I had to get five to achieve a round 30.
Now, you may notice that I'm touching my big toe to the adjacent toe. Nothing to worry about, it's simply something I have to do if they ever touch -- twenty times over and under. Should be finished soon.
And now, we are ready to play our game!
So...let's see. We just need to take our folded piece of paper, which...actually I'm noticing one side is about a millimeter wider than the other side...but we'll just let that go, huh? And we need to place it into the cup that we've put in the center of the table, so we need to re-do that, and...Hold on again. This cup has a chip in the mouth. And this paper towel is slightly wet! And these quarters are from...odd-numbered years??? And...you know what? This table is really more of an oval than a circle.
Gaggggh! Dammit! Your finger touched the table again!
Fuck this game!
Look for the syndicated version of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: The Game every Friday in your local newspaper.
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