Ob•ses•sion (n.): A persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often
unreasonable idea or feeling; broadly: compelling motivation.
Eat
breakfast, take out the trash, search the Web for pictures of
Mary-Kate and
Ashley Olsen, take a shower, go to work. What a person does as a part of
his
or her daily routine—often when no one is looking—can be completely out of
the
norm. A person interested in IU basketball might have season tickets and
keep
up on the players’ statistics. An obsessed IU basketball fan has season
tickets, has the stats down to the hundredths place, and knows what kind
of
soap Bracey Wright uses. Professor Edward Gubar’s Fall 2003 Magazine
Reporting
class uncovered the secret—and sometimes not-so-secret—obsessions of an
eclectic mix of people and documented their testimonials in their own
words.
Each article was written in the style of Studs Terkel, a Pulitzer
Prize-winning
journalist, oral historian, and radio talk-show host. We had a suspicion
that
the people we encounter in everyday life aren’t always as normal as they’d
like
us to believe. Here, 15 seemingly normal people discuss what gets them
going
and what it makes them do. From a Dungeons and Dragons enthusiast to a
disgruntled and dissatisfied student’s 3.99 “mark of imperfection,” they
could
be funny, they could be disturbing, or they could be a psychiatrist's
playground. Whatever they are, they take obsessions to a whole ‘nother
level. . . .
