Something is definitely wrong with me. I went shopping today and didn’t buy any chocolate. Some of you may be thinking: if it isn’t on the list… But I never, EVER, forget to buy chocolate. Well, obviously that statement is patently untrue as I did forget. But that’s my point. This is the first time I forgot. Worse – I’m absolutely fine about it! What is wrong with me? I hate not having chocolate in the house. Even if I don’t eat it I am comforted at the thought that it is there!
We have a friend who feels that way about toilet rolls. If there aren’t at least 6 spare loo rolls in the house he panics.
Where, when and how do these bizarre idiosyncracies manifest themselves? I am sure that as a child I was completely unaware of the chocolate situation in the house. Maybe it is just me and my friend who OCD over an inanimate object. Like a child who has to have the comfort of parental presence. Maybe we transferred that need over to toilet rolls and chocolate.
I’m sure that a lot of people feel exactly the same way about their mobile phones. I have seen grown men thrown into a complete panic when they couldn’t locate theirs. At school pupils end up in tears – okay, maybe they’re just scared of the bollocking they’ll get from their parents, but it is the same thing.
But here I sit, perfectly calm and contained. Maybe this is what they called a delayed reaction. Perhaps, later on in the evening, perhaps whilst performing my nightly ablutions, I shall turn into a crazed maniac and rush out of the house in my bedroom slippers and drive extremely fast to the first all-night petrol station I am able to locate and demand a cacao product. It would be most unlike me. But then I haven’t been chocolate-free for over two decades.
Things change. Maybe someone’s invented a card for it.
Banished by Bea Turvey
