10 Things I Do that are a Little Bit Crazy

Anyone who's been around me for any length of time knows I'm prone to a bit of OCD*- like behavior (or maybe OCPD**). This "OCD-Lite" runs in my family, and all of us siblings have just a smattering of "symptoms".
None of us has anything so major as to cause undue stress; you're more likely to find us laughing at our little neuroses or poking fun when we see it in one another.
* Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
* Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder
Here's a a list of some of my more common, uh, eccentricities:

---

• Movie Middle Madness
  When I see a movie in the theater, I always try to sit exactly in the center of whatever row I'm in. I check this by looking up at the movie screen; if it's not split equally in half to either side - I move 'til it is. (This drives Paula crazy.)
• Buttons - All or Nothing
  When I button my coat or jacket, I like all the buttons done up - or none of them. If the top one isn't buttoned, I'll unbutton the bottom one too. (It's symmetrical that way.)
• Five is the One
  When I listen to music or watch TV - anything involving a volume control - I set the volume in increments of 5 (20, 25, etc.). If 23 is the right volume for the show I'm watching, I'll set it to either 20 (a bit too soft) or 25 (a bit too loud). This also drives Paula crazy (as I yell over a really loud TV: "IS THAT TOO LOUD FOR YOU, HONEY?!").
• Cruise CONTROL
  When I use my car's cruise control on the freeway, I set it to exactly the speed I want to go (usually an increment of 5). The speed limit is 65mph? Then 64... or 66... won't do. (But if it drifts between 64 and 66 and averages 65; that's okay.)
• Ease on Down the Road
  And speaking of freeways, I usually choose the middle lane to drive in - it's symmetrical. A 5 lane freeway = Dan in lane number 3, with 2 lanes on either side of him. If the freeway has an even number of lanes (no middle), I drive on either the far left or far right.
• Car MagicOne of my favorite little daydreams is that I have the ability to make my old, beat-up car brand new again - wave my wand and watch as it "grows" newer. It's the idea of making something that's imperfect into something that's perfect I like. (Maybe the fact that every car I've owned has been old and/or beat up has something to do with this.)
• Stack Attack
  I have a stacking thing. Can't help but straighten little piles of magazines or mail or... you get the idea. If I can't have it clean, I'll at least have it organized and stacked into little four-cornered piles....
• Photo Fives
  Whenever I'm using my photo editing software, I set things by 5s. Maybe the picture looks best at 17% saturation, it's going to get set at either 15% or 20%.... What can I say?
• Rinse and Repeat
  I have a need to rinse my hands after eating, to get the (sometimes imaginary) grease off. Notice I don't say "wash", as in soap and water. While I generally wash with soap as needed, the rinse and repeat is a non-needed thing. It just makes me feel better.
• The Ties that Bind
  I own seven neckties. They are arranged, in order, on a hanger in my closet. I wear the one on the end closest to me. When I'm done, it goes around to the back of the line, and the other ties get slid forward. So a new one is ready for next time. I pretty much wear these ties in their "hanger order", regardless of whether the "scheduled" tie matches that day's outfit.... Paula just loves me anyway.

---

Joking about mental illness disclaimer: While I poke fun at my own oddities, I know that OCD (and other mental illnesses) can really impact a person's life, and I take the subject seriously. In fact, I've dealt with my own Major Depressive Disorder for much of my life, and it's only in the last few years that I've begun to really discover joy in living.

doc savage magazine

5 = tip-top
4 = an enjoyable romp
3 = fair to middling
2 = not so much
1 = lame-o

There was death afoot in the darkness.

It crept furtively along a steel girder. Hundreds of feet below yawned glass-and-brick-walled cracks--New York streets. Down there, late workers scurried home-ward. Most of them carried umbrellas, and did not glance upward.

Even had they looked, they probably would have noticed nothing. The night was black as a cave bat. Rain threshed down monotonously. The clammy sky was like an oppressive shroud wrapped around the tops of the tall buildings.

One skyscraper was under construction. It had been completed to the eightieth floor. Some offices were in use.

Above the eightieth floor, an ornamental observation tower jutted up a full hundred and fifty feet more. The metal work of this was in place, but no masonry had been laid. Girders lifted a gigantic steel skeleton. The naked beams were a sinister forest.

It was in this forest that Death prowled.

Death was a man.

Those were the opening words of the very first issue of "Doc Savage Magazine".

Sure, the writing is less than scholarly; but doesn't it just GRAB you? Well, it did me. It was published in March of 1933, and introduced a set of characters that continued for 181 issues over the next sixteen years -- till July of 1949.

Here's the basic premise:

"Doc Savage, whose real name is Clark Savage, Jr., is a physician, surgeon, scientist, adventurer, inventor, explorer, researcher, and musician — a renaissance man. A team of scientists assembled by his father trained his mind and body to near-superhuman abilities almost from birth, giving him great strength and endurance, a photographic memory, mastery of the martial arts, and vast knowledge of the sciences. Doc is also a master of disguise and an excellent imitator of voices, though he admits to having trouble with women's voices. "He rights wrongs and punishes evildoers." Dent described the hero as a mix of Sherlock Holmes' deductive abilities, Tarzan's outstanding physical abilities, Craig Kennedy's scientific education, and Abraham Lincoln's goodness. Dent described Doc Savage as manifesting "Christliness."
- From an essay by Micah Wright.

I think I read my first Doc Savage story around age twelve, maybe a little earlier. The stories were being republished by Bantam Books at the time (between 1964 and 1990) and I'm sure it was the cover art that caught my eye. How could an undersized nerdy kid like myself resist such a heroic looking book cover? (Answer: I couldn't.)

Anyway. All together, Doc Savage has been brought to life through the original pulp magazines, the Bantam reprints, via comic book, radio, and even a (really bad) movie.

On my end, I've managed to collect maybe 30 or so of the Bantam books and even a couple of the original pulp magazines. A few years back, the whole series was available for free in e-book format, so I've read nearly all of the stories due to that.

And - get this - it even turns out that Doc Savage was (loosely) based on a real person:


While visiting John L Nanovic, the editor of the Doc Savage magazine, writer-researcher Will Murray learned that Doc Savage may have been, in part, based on a real-life person named Richard Henry Savage (1846–1903). Like his fictional namesake, Savage was a true renaissance man—soldier, engineer, diplomat, lawyer, novelist, civic leader, and war hero.

Richard Henry Savage was born on June 12, 1846, in Utica, New York, the son of Richard Savage and Jane Moorhead Savage (née Ewart). His ancestors were English, Scottish and Irish, and his grandfather, a civil engineer, arrived in America around 1805.

Savage graduated from West Point in 1868 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He joined the Egyptian army as a major in 1871. He subsequently served as U.S. vice consul in Marseilles and Rome. On January 2, 1873, he married Anna Josephine Scheible of Berlin, Germany.

Later, Savage served on the Texas-Mexico frontier and as a chief engineer on a railroad in California, retiring in 1884. Following his retirement in 1884, Savage traveled extensively, visiting Turkey, Japan, China, Russia, Asia Minor, Korea, and Honduras.

Returning to the United States in 1891, and a confidant of President Ulysses S. Grant, Savage was given several diplomatic appointments around the world. Savage could talk of all the wild spots in the world that he had visited and had many personal mementos of his strange life.

Savage wrote his first novel, My Official Wife (1891), which proved to be his most famous. Savage wrote over 40 books, including Our Mysterious Passenger and Other Stories (1899), which was published by Street and Smith a year after a 17-year-old Henry W. Ralston, the future co-creator of Doc Savage, joined the firm.

Savage became senior Captain of the 27th U.S. Volunteer Infantry and was appointed Brigadier General and Chief Engineer of Spanish War Veterans in 1900.

After living such an adventurous life, Savage was run over by a horse-drawn wagon while crossing Sixth Avenue in New York City, on October 3, 1903, dying eight days later at the age of 57.
- Wikipedia

Weird, huh?

So. Yeah.

I really like Doc Savage.

I could list out all the cultural and literary merits of the series, and have a discussion on how the Doc Savage character affected the blue collar population during the Great Depression - and while those things are cool, they're not really the main reason I like Doc Savage so much.

Really, I just want to be him....