There's the rather sad recounting of perennial hand washing and eating avoidance, and a very funny account of the author's bat mitzvah - Traig calls these functions ' catered affairs for middle-schoolers.' There's the annual interfaith family attempt to get a cheap Christmas tree, resulting in the decoration one year of a houseplant that mom appropriately called ' a Christmas twee.' And there's the unleashing of the scrupulosity monster at Passover.
It seems that she tried to apply all the rules, though with only a vague understanding of their intent. They have the devil we have the details', a host of text for ' crazy source material'. She tells us that though Christians have the brimstone, Jews have ' minute laws. Traig chose to follow her father's Jewish faith (requiring a conversion since mom was raised Catholic). But she does make it hilarious in retrospect. Though Traig's recollections are very funny at times, this and her associated anorexia must have caused her parents huge anxiety and made life extraordinarily difficult. Though the condition wasn't labeled at the time, she tells us that she suffered from the age of twelve throughout her teens ' a strange condition called scrupulosity, a hyper-religious form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.' She tells us she was ' hobbled by constant nagging worries'.
Jennifer Traig had a strange childhood, despite relatively regular parents and sister. Devil in the Details: Scenes from an obsessive girlhood by Jennifer Traig
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