The number of women I know who have OCD, Obsessive Cushion Disorder, is alarmingly high and the condition is spreading like a virus.
My flatmate and my mum are two such sufferers who openly state that there are simply not enough cushions in the world. In my parents’ living room there are two sofas (a 3-seater and 2-seater) that are more than perfectly comfortable by themselves but my mum feels the need to add a total of 13 extra cushions?!
These extra cushions serve no purpose, being just sofa decorations and provide no extra comfort at all. In fact, they actually cause discomfort as the cushions get wedged into the gaps of the proper sofa cushions and push them out. You end up moving the cushions to the other end of the sofa or chuck them on the floor.
A sufferer of Obsessive Cushion Disorder
If unchecked, OCD sufferers would keep adding cushions until you could no longer see the sofa and it would just be a big pile of cushions.
This debilitating affliction is not limited to the abuse of perfectly good sofas, but will also encourage the sufferer to obsess about her bed. These women will believe that the bed and pillows are in constant danger from attack and so need to be protected by an ever-present army of cushions.
Boyfriends, partners and visiting guests are forced to go through the ridiculous ritual of removing all these completely superfluous cushions onto the floor and then in the morning having to replace them in the exact place they were found. The order and placement of the cushions is equally important to the OCD sufferer, perhaps more so, than the number of cushions.
The video clip below from the BBC comedy Coupling (starring Jack Davenport, also of FlashForward, This Life and Pirates of the Caribbean fame) helps explain the pointlessness of cushions.
Sadly there is no known cure for Obsessive Cushion Disorder.
Jake McMillan
