Gotta Go To Kmart....Watch Wapner...

I've never told this to a living soul before, but now I will share it with the world, in the hopes of helping someone else who thinks they're all alone.

Ever since I was a very young girl, there has been this thing that I do in my mind. It usually happens when I'm reading, but also when I'm listening to people speak, or talking to myself in my mind. I see the words in my head when I'm talking to myself, so I'm looking at what I'm saying and doing the following...

I try to match the punctuation in a sentence with the number of syllables in that sentence. By punctuation, I actually mean any extra "stroke". These rules were established long ago, before my age was in double digits, so there's no use arguing them. These are the markings that I count:

• quotation marks (one count per mark)
  
• dotting of lowercase i's and j's
• commas (2 counts)
• periods
• question marks (3 counts)
• exclamation points
• parentheses (1 per parenthesis)
• colons and semi-colons
  

I normally do this when I'm reading. As I read, I'm counting the syallables of the previous sentence and trying to make the extra marks add up to the same number. It's completely habit now, I usually don't realize I'm doing it. Once in a while it hits me, and I have to close the book and shake my head and tell myself to stop.

There are very specific rules to this. For instance, quotation marks can be counted over and over, to make the counting come out right, but nothing else can. I can also add quotation marks to a sentence even if they're not there, because someone could have said it. Sometimes I'll have to put 2 or 3 sentences together to make the syllables equal the marks. If a phrase works out particularly nicely with the syllables/markings rules, I may repeat it over and over in mind, saying it to myself while making the markings. Again, this is done without my even realizing it.

Here's an example: I normally do this when I'm reading. The crossing of the first t is I, the dotting of the i is "nor", the apostrophe covers "mal" and "ly", and the dotting of the 2nd i is "do". I would then add quotation marks, which would cover "this when I'm rea" and then the period coveres "ing". And that one makes me feel good. I don't have to go over the quotation marks again or add another sentence. If I hadn't needed to add the quotation marks it would have been perfect. but that happens infrequently.

You can see examples of this in my books from childhood. I used to write while I read. I'd write the last word of every paragraph in the space left on that line, as I would continue on reading. And sometimes you can see little markings of where I'd be counting marks and syllables.

I've come to realize that my compulsions were born of my mind never having enough to do. Even reading isn't enough, I have to be reading AND thinking about something else.

I really wish that my compulsive counting was of something more valuable. I have seen people on Oprah who can alphabetize large quantities of things in seconds, people who can add large groups of number, things of that nature. Mine is so useless and uninteresting. It's so dumb I can barely even explain how it works.

It's not a "WOW! Your kid is so amazing!" kind of special skill. It's a "Oooh, I'm so sorry, which group home have you selected?" kind of special skill.

But there it is.

And now you know.