Iron I Too Young For This?

I recently noticed that it's been happening with an alarming frequency.

I wake up to the sound of my handphone alarm. Stagger to the bathroom to shower and do my other daily 'rituals'. Then I turn on the iron and press the clothes that I'll be wearing that day. Sometimes I'll look at the clock and then realise, "Shit, I'm late!" Then I'd grab all my stuff - keys, wallets, handphones etc - and rush out the door. The moment I've locked the front door and am halfway down the elevator (I live in an apartment a few floors up) it will suddenly hit me.

"Damn, did I turn off the iron?"

Glancing at my watch I'd realise that if I keep going now I might still make it for the meeting/gathering/appointment/date. I try to brush it off and tell myself that I'm just being paranoid. That I'd already switched off the iron the minute I finished ironing. But the nagging feeling will persist. And by the time I reach the ground floor and start walking towards the car a mental image will flash in my head. Its an alarming scene (due to my overactive imagination, it feels like a film) of the camera tracking in towards my iron, which will dramatically short-circuit and then burst into flames, engulfing the ironing board and spread over to the curtains. Within minutes the whole apartment is completely torched and I end up staying at YMCA for the rest of the year, turning tricks at the corner of Jln Brickfields for a few bucks so I can pay the rent and eat cheap nasi lemak.

Sighing, I will turn around and head back into the elevator, up to the apartment, open the door, walk all the way to the bedroom and check the plug point.

The iron is off.

Resigned and beaten, I turn to walk away. Then another nagging feeling will surface.

"Are you SURE its really off? Why don't you just test it, just to be sure. You can never be TOO sure you know?"

I know, I know, I belong in a straight jacket. But society still has better things to do than go around arresting people with minor mental dysfunctions thank ye gods (although people who fart in elevators should be torched to a crisp using their own 'gas', screw the straight jackets).

So I turn back and turn the switch on and off. Just to be sure.

Then, just to be extra sure, I'll turn it on and off again.

And, for good luck, I'll turn it on and off again.

All this while every cell in my brain is yelling at me, "You nimwit! What are you doing!? You're late for a meeting/appointment/gathering/date and you're here turning a stupid switch on and off?!"

But for some reason my body will refuse to listen and keep on doing it. I sometimes end up fondling the switch just to make sure its on the off position. JUST TO BE SURE.

I guess its some form of Obsessive Compulsive Behavior. But it's something I've never had till recently. Can someone actually develope OCB later in life? Compound to this the fact that I just turned over a quarter of a century last year (and experienced what a friend of mine calls the Quarter-Life Crisis, but that's another story). Am I getting semi-senile? Is human society progressing at such an alarming rate that we mentally grow up and age to senility within half the span of our ancestors?

Then I remember my grandpa, aged 78. He shuffles around the house, opening and closing each drawer ten times and muttering to himself, "Drawer open, drawer closed. Drawer open, drawer closed..."

So I guess - like my thinning hair - this condition must be hereditary, but did it have to happen so early in my life? I can probably deal with it when I'm retired and lying around drinking margheritas in my beach front mansion (by then I can afford to have my house burned down and then rebuilt it again. That or just send my laundry away for pressing). Right now I need to not be late for work all the time because I can't remember if I've flipped some frickin' switch.

Of course, I can always wake up earlier...

Oh shit, did I remember to lock the car?