I fear crack-stepping. And it's nothing to do with drugs.

If you know me, you understand that the trip back to childhood is not as long as it is for most (I would say "for everyone else," but my ex-roommate Mary taught me that she's closer to childhood than I am).

I watch the Disney Channel, I love cartoons, Disney movies (I always ask for them on my birthdays and holidays. And all throughout May.), I know every line of The Little Rascals, I still sit on Mama's lap sometimes, I sleep with my teddy bear that I've had for almost 15 years (and I have no shame admitting that. Another childish attribute? I think so), I love coloring books, Red Rover, Duck Duck Goose, and naptime, and I don't step on the cracks.

Now that last childhood habit makes me chuckle, for I learned long ago through a frightening truth-or-dare experience that stepping on the cracks does not, in fact, break one's mother's back. On the other hand, sitting on her lap might do that some day. But at any rate, if this is the case, why do I still walk so awkwardly, taking extra big (or extra small) steps to avoid my foot's falling on a crack in the sidewalk? I'm sure I look ridiculous; I walk to school fairly quickly, yet even in the rush to get to class or work, I take the time to watch where my feet are in relation to the sidewalk cracks and adjust my steps accordingly.

Today I happened to walk behind a girl who I discovered to be a fellow fearer of crack-stepping For the purposes of this blog, we will call such people "Anti-Crackers."
. . . Actually we won't. Bad idea, sorry.

Anyway, as I paid attention to my own steps (which I made sure were perfectly synchronized with hers, and still matching the tempo of the song that was stuck in my head at the time--yes, I have a marching band geek still lodged in my soul), I realized that she, too, was adjusting every 3 or 4 steps to be long or small enough to avoid stepping on the cracks. I smiled to myself, happy that I'm not the only one who is quirky like that.

I thought about it the rest of my way to work, trying to assign some sort of meaning to it. Like, perhaps we do, on some level, feel like we are protecting our mothers from harm when we avoid those sidewalk cracks. I mean to say that we take absolute control of a situation that has been laid at our feet (at least that much is literal), hoping that by our perfection in such an insignificant matter, we may have the confidence necessary to influence and change something that is significant--for example, the well-being of our mothers' backs.

. . . But then I learned that sidewalk crack avoidance is a symptom of OCD.
And I suppose that makes some sense as well.