Mustard, gotta have mustard!
Better yet, make it an import, from a place that speaks to me, for some reason. Maybe I've visited there, or have friends and family there, or have read about in my favorite books or seen it on my favorite cooking shows. Or maybe that location is, in fact, renowned for the mustard that it produces.
Or is it something else that drives this inexplicable interest? It's one thing to become an enthusiast about something, surely. Upon introduction to that item or topic, we recognize its appeal to us. We want to know more and more and more about it. Or acquire lots and lots and lots of it.
And when does that interest-turned-enthusiasm progress to obsession? When is that definitive corner rounded, when is there little likelihood of turning back, when does the exigency spring forth?
Each person, as ever, is different. Maybe there is such a thing as the obsessive personality, hard-coded into our genetic DNA strands. Alternatively, maybe there is just something that plucks at our heart strings, for some cosmic reason-beyond-reason and we fall in love with the topic or the idea or the object.
Are enthusiasts and obsessives in stories the ones we call quirky and eccentric? Or is there something darker at play? Ah, that can often be the question!
