OK, so if any of you guys have watched Monk, the TV show or the movie, then you know what this post is most likely going to be about. For those of you who have never watched Monk, it’s an amazing and hilarious show about a extremely talented detective named Mr. Monk who has obsessive compulsive disorder! If you haven’t watched it, you should really watch the reruns or watch it on Netflix!
The show mixes a perfect amount of clever humor with pretty accurate information about OCD — and with enticing drama. I started watching Monk even before I really knew I had OCD, throughout my diagnosis, and although the show was canceled, I still go back and watch episodes from time to time.
Anyway, I had what you would call “a classic Monk moment” the other night. In my opinion, a classic Monk moment is an OCD moment that for the most part merges a slight OCD tendency or a larger OCD tendency with a good amount of humor.
I was talking with a group of four of my friends on my floor and a guy on my floor who is a big jokster unzipped the front pocket on my friend’s coat that she was wearing. I didn’t really know it was going to bother my OCD so much, but it did! I wanted her to zip the pocket back up! It was bugging me so much to see the zipper unzipped right on the front of her coat. So I said, “You should zip up your jacket!”. And thus the fun began, lol.
The jokster guy on my floor immediately picked up on this OCD tendency of mine and when my friend zipped her jacket back up, he immediately zipped it back halfway down. Halfway down! That’s even worse than all the way down! We then continued with this little game … the guy kept unzipping her coat pocket and I kept insisting that it be zipped back up!
The guy wasn’t doing this to be mean or anything, he was just playfully having fun with my seemingly “little” quirky OCD tendency. He didn’t know how massively OCD has affected my life, and since this zipper problem wasn’t causing me the kind of major distress that contamination or chemicles do I continued to play along instead of leaving the situation (like I tend to be with some of the more anxiety-provoking situations that I encounter).
My friend Thon (a nickname, of course) then kept insisting I turn around so that I didn’t see the unzipped coat pocket, and I kept turning back to face it insisting that I could “feel it” — even when I wan’t looking at the zipper. Then my friend Mandy, one of my closest friends here at college, piped up insisting that I do exposure with the zipper and continue looking at it even though it was zipped down.
Lol, Mandy and I have talked about OCD and exposure in the past since she is one of my closest friends. And then my friend Mike (who I am not quite so close to) was trying to figure out why the zipper was bothering me so much and he concluded I must have ADD. Lol, Mandy quickly corrected him saying “not ADD … OCD!”
Lol, in the end we just ended up finding the situation hilarious and we were all laughing. :) A classic Monk moment for sure!
MONK! i luv that show! he is so funny. reminds me of myself sometimes!