Stop crying honey, your bruise is running

I am a total continuity freak...I don't mean to be, it just happens. I notice things that are out of place. I notice things that are wrong. I am drawn to precision. I notice and actually look for patterns. Such as patterns in a piece of tile or a typed page, the texture of a tablecloth. I am very strange!

I was watching a show last night where the woman was bruised from being beaten up by a mob member. She listened at the door and got caught..After she was rescued, she was at the hospital saying good-bye to a friend who was going into the witness protection program. She had large bruises around her eyes and mouth. She began crying and little by little her bruise ran down her cheeks...How can one take a scene seriously when the injury is dripping off her face?

Another thing is an apartment scene in the Young and the Restless...Okay, wait, I do watch soaps. Yes, I admit it. Okay, back to what I was saying, so this apartment of these college students have had the same plate and saucer sitting in the wooden drying rack since day one. Only one day did it change. One day somebody cooked in the kitchen and washed dishes. I thought, finally, they are going to change the damn dishes in the rack! For all of five minutes they did...Next day, back to the same two dishes in the rack....Things like this get to me. If we are to believe the shows, do something with the sets to make them real dammit!

Or I have noticed the same coffee sets in different households on the same show. Or those chairs with the gold backs that are used in every show with a large event. From TV programs, usually for weddings, to the Award shows where they serve dinner...I would love to have been the maker of those chairs, or at least their leasing agent!

I am notorious in my family for catching inconsistencies in shows I watch. Bad editing. One shot they will show two glasses of wine. Next shot, one glass is half empty. Next shot is back to two full glasses. This drives me crazy...

A shirt is with two unbuttoned buttons, then fully buttoned, and back to unbuttoned in the same scene. A stain on a shirt, there one minute and as if somebody caught it, gone the next.

I love Tivo, I can stop, and go back to these admitted distractions of mine. Just to prove the things I have noticed. I may be nuts, but I like confirmation!

Somebody with a certain hair do, for instance. One scene the woman may have a clip in her hair and the next scene she doesn't and then, behold, it is back again. I will pause, rewind and show it to anybody who will listen. Or her hair may be parted in the middle and then on the side and then back to the middle. Or perhaps bangs today, gone tomorrow. God forbid they should change the color or get it cut in the middle of a scene, that really sets me off. Just wait til the next scene...A new do is okay then!

I know this makes me very strange...I don't care.

I also look for patterns. Patterns in anything. Three trees in the shape of a triangle. Clouds in shapes or how they are spaced. Seeing patterns in tiles in the bathroom. Seeing patterns in typed pages...For instance, a whole line of blank spaces that go across a paragraph or page. When I look at it I see the words, but the stripe of un-typed spaces stand out to me. Does this remind you of Rain Man? I cannot count toothpicks. Although, I can count cards. I also have a wicked memory for numbers. Phone numbers, credit card numbers, part numbers. I don't mean to remember them, but they become a pattern in my head and I will never forget them. I have family members who call me to ask for numbers instead of actually going to their phone books! Same goes for dates...I just remember them, first forming a pattern as usual, then forever in the number department of my brain.

But, mostly it is in movies or on TV when things are wrong that bug me most. I don't know why. I know scenes are stopped for the day and continued the next day while filming. I can recognize that the hair style is only slightly changed and that the actor had gone about their day, showered, had their hair redone to look like it did the day before while shooting. Only to realize it is a little fluffier or something minutely changed. To most, this would go unnoticed. But to me, it is an obsession.

So, for the actress I was watching the other day, stop crying honey, your bruise is running....