You'll Thank Me Later!

If you have ever seen the hit show Monk, you probably have heard him tell people "you'll thank me later" when he would straighten a picture frame, someone's tie, or anything else that was not his due to his extreme case of being OCD. Thankfully, Mr. Monk is an extreme case, but I have been known to at least show a few mild OCD symptoms; if I go up the stairs two at a time, I am bothered if my legs do not skip the same number of stairs, and if I am touched on one side, I like to be touched on the opposite side to make everything symmetrical.

Each month, I have duty for the Army Reserves for a weekend, and for a few months, I knew I had this month's duty this weekend. It was on the calendar, so of course, I knew I was right. At least, I thought so. In retrospect, I do remember some talk of a change, though several boring factors kept me from realizing the switch was made.

I finally realized the change when I online to check the unit's online calendar. We just switched to a new system where our request for the hotel is done online, and I wanted to double check to make sure everything was ready to go, when to my surprise, not only did I not have a hotel request, but I did not even have duty! Four hours of driving, a very long night, and almost two tanks of gas were just barely saved by my OCD tendency of quadruple-checking everything. I have a habit of double, triple, and quadruple checking my suitcase, alarm clock, schedule, etc, and this time Mr. Monk's saying finally held true.