OCD and comic strips

The dude who delivers our paper put a Christmas card with a self addressed envelope in our paper about a week before Christmas. I am ashamed to announce that we never gave him a tip. I know that it's never to late, so I could still send one, but I think we threw the card and envelope away. Maybe I should get up at 5:30 and sit outside to wait for him. At any rate, now I know that it's important to remember to tip because Alex and I used to get the San Francisco Chronicle everyday... even though we only ordered it to come on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. It turned out to be the kind of thing I decided not to call and complain about, although I did have a few days of remorse when I felt guilty enough that I would try to get Alex to call and let the Chronicle know we were ripping them off. Of course I didn't do it myself, I just urged Alex to do it, which he didn't. So we got the paper everyday for almost a year, until right after Christmas. I think the absence of a tip had something to do with it. Maybe he was giving it to us for free on purpose, to get a tip. Or maybe it was the lack of a tip made him look at the records a little closer. Whatever the reason may have been it's just as well that we don't get it everyday, because to be honest, it was an emotional burden for me. When it first started coming I felt a lot of pressure to read the whole thing every day. Then I narrowed it down to where I would at least flip through every page to see if anything caught my eye and read at least 3 stories. I was often late for work. For awhile we became those creepy people who have a stack of articles "we are going to read". So instead of looking like crazy folk with the leaning tower of periodicals I decided that I would just secretly act crazy and have a relationship with the comic page. It was a way to justify my not reading the whole paper on a daily basis, but still feel as though I was taking advantage of this daily opportunity. That's when I realized I have an obsessive compulsive disorder. I had to read all the comics. Even the bad ones. You know what I'm talking about... Hagar the Horrible, Blondie, Dennis the Menace and worst of all Family Circus. It's shameful to admit it, but I read them all, everyday. I would start with the worst ones and end with my favorites. Some days I would try to stop myself and only read the 5 I really like. I would put the paper in the pile to be recycled but before I could leave for work I would have to pull it out of the pile to read the rest. And there it was confirmed, every time, Beetle Bailey was still stupid. Zippy the Pinhead was still beyond my comprehension. For Better or for Worse was predictable, yet I was compelled to see how the story progressed. Hagar will never change, he'll always be that good for nothing Viking with a cranky wife. And none of these were ever funny. Ever. But heaven forbid I leave anyone behind. Get Fuzzy was always the last one to be read, because it's the best. If my eyes wandered over Get Fuzzy at the beginning of my obligation to the comics the whole project was a disaster. If I read the best first what did I have to look forward to? Mr. Boffo? That cartoon can't even rely on half decent animation.
I knew my unhealthy relationship with the comics was supremely ugly when we got back from Christmas vacation and our house sitter had saved all the papers... Alex separated all the comic pages out and put them in chronological order for me. He was an enabler. This was no longer fun, not even a hobby. This was addiction. One paper was too waterlogged to make it in. I'll never know if Garfield happened to be funny on that rainy day. Is that was I was looking for? Something that was usually extremely un-funny to suddenly make my gut bust with hilarity? I think there was something about the predictability about the whole thing that was appealing. Rolling my eyes at the Classic Peanuts was part of my morning routine.
But now I can put it all behind me.

except on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.


to give my props... here are my top 5
Get Fuzzy
Boondocks
Rhymes with Orange
Doonesbury
Bad Reporter