SHOPPING CARTS

A couple of years after I was officially given the diagnosis of OCD,
I returned to school to study psychology. One course I took
was called 'Motivation,' and the professor of that course,
let's call him Professor M, always said things
in class that inflamed me, for one reason or another.
Usually it had something to do with my OCD. So in one particular
e-mail, he said to me:
"It doesn't matter what shopping cart you choose!"
Well, Professor M, if you have OCD, it ALWAYS matters what cart you choose!
And here are the reasons why, in an essay.

If you have OCD, it âlways matters what cart you choose. You
must choose the right cart, and you must choose it using just
the feeling of it being the right cart. You will just know which
one is the right one. I think it has something to do
with the fact that what makes a cart a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ one has
everything to do with the magical connections that one makes
in ones head regarding the cart’s feeling of ‘rightness’or ‘wrongness’;
purely arbitrary connectionsthat have nothing to do with the cart itself.
It has something to do with the ‘what-if’ factor: what if this cart has
been touched by something that makes me uncomfortable and gives
me anxiety? What if it’s been touched by someone with a contagious
disease? Or some dangerous chemical? The list could
go on and on. And you cannot see whether any of these things have
occurred or not. You cannot control what has touched this cart in the past,
or what will touch it in the future.
The magical thinking makes you think you can pick an innocuous cart,
that you can tell it it’s the ‘right’ one.