From my reading of Maslow:

Compulsive-obsessives try frantically to order and stabilize the world so that no unmanageable, unexpected or unfamiliar dangers will ever appear. They hedge themselves about with all sorts of ceremonials, rules, and formulas so that every possible contingency may be provided for and so that no new contingencies may appear. … If, through no fault of their own, something unexpected does occur, they go into a panic reaction as if this unexpected occurrence constituted a grave danger.

I’m reminded, as I transcribe that, of the memorable refrain of the about-to-die test pilot in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff: “I’ve tried A! I’ve tried B! I’ve tried C!” This isn’t to say that fighter pilots are obsessive-compulsive; it’s just that we’re all prone to like our routines and our normalcy, and that OCD folks can probably best understand the panic that Wolfe frames well in that phrase.

But in my own sweet way, I’m mildly OCD. I’m a fairly whimsical person, but I’m also routinized in weird ways. A for-instance: the bills in my wallet will always be in there, facing the same direction, highest denomination at the back, lowest denomination at the front. My keys will be in my left front pants pocket, my Treo in my right front pants pocket, and my waller in my right rear pocket, always placed with the fold facing my spine. And as fanatical as I am about this—if I’m handed a wad of cash, I pretty much have to stop what I’m doing to fix it, including pulling over from driving to handle it—I also try to take different routes home each day. This was far easier when I lived on Monte Sano and had two points of ingress and three or four equivalent routes to these same points of ingress; nowadays, I have only one efficient way home, and it drives me up the wall.

I fully recognize that, in all of this, I am an amalgamation of my parents—Dad, who always has to be the last one in the house to check that the doors are locked, regardless of how much he might trust me to do it, and Mom, who used the multiple-ways-to-get-somewhere tactic to drive Dad nuts all those years. [Now that Mom doesn't drive, I'm sure she's the one going nuts, going the same way every time. She exacts her revenge, though, when we go out driving and Dad has to play "follow the finger". Meanwhile, I sit in the back seat, softly laughing to myself.] But yes … as someone who is OCD about things, it’s also really contradictory for me to be very much extemporaneous in others.

I think this contributes to my kookiness, and I know that it drives people around me nuts. I think it’s charming, though, in my own sweet way.

“Plan B? I’m still working on Plan A!”