The Woman on the Bus

Yesterday I was riding the bus to campus and sat across from a woman with obsessive-compulsive disorder. At least, I believe she had the disorder. For at least 10 minutes she combed her hair in one spot on the back of her head. Over and over and over she combed. Occasionally she would switch hands but she kept combing for about 10 minutes. Then she stopped. It was so interesting to see these compulsions in real life. I’ve seen them in videos and read about them but hadn’t yet seen them in real life. It’s possible that she was just combing her hair or that she had a tic disorder that manifested itself through combing over and over but it sure looked like OCD. I really felt sorry for her. Sorry isn’t quite the right word but OCD is not easy to deal with. She didn’t even look like she really was paying attention to what she was doing – her movements were so robotic. Anyway, that was one interesting experience yesterday.