DISORDERLY CONDUCT

No slouch in the obsessive-compulsive department, husband Michael identifies himself as a "checker," a trait he shares with his wife. "If we both sit down to watch television, one of us is always getting up to check something," says Michael. "I might focus on the garage door and get up 24 times to make sure that it's locked. Meanwhile, my wife might keep checking to see whether the stove is turned off. It's just something we have to do--and it's always a certain number of times that we have to do it." Oddly, however, neither partner has much compassion for the other spouse's deep-seated need to check "just one more time."

"It's crazy, but when we're 'checking,' what seems so important to one of us means absolutely nothing to the other one," says Dorothy. "I'll tell my husband to stop worrying, the door's locked.

"But at the same time, I'm running into the kitchen for the 30th time. 'Did I really turn the coffeepot off?'"

Sorting through the hodgepodge of weird behavioral problems that plague young victims of this baffling disease, one question looms large:

Where does the kid end and the Tourette's begin?
Shrugging, Betty Gayle nods in the direction of her son, a teenage Star Trek fanatic who is currently poring over the liner notes on the latest Trekkie video.

"This is the whole package, and you can only try to do the best you can," she explains. "These kids are fighting a battle every day. When he was first diagnosed, I fell into the trap of feeling so sorry for him that I overcompensated in other ways, buying him things, stuff like that. Then I realized that he's got to learn to live with Tourette's."

And in the process, so has his mother. "Anyone who's got a kid with Tourette's has pretty much gotten used to being called a 'fucking bitch,'" says Gayle. "That goes with the territory." So do a lot of other problems that have nothing to do with the usual tribulations of parenthood. After he saw a television program about UFO abductions, Gayle's son became convinced that space aliens were going to kidnap him while he slept. "We're still working on that one," says Gayle, smiling. "It's been a lot of fun." Gayle shrugs. "These kids are bright, the disease can be controlled and it's not a life-threatening condition. But you've got to be able to deal with Tourette's with a sense of humor--if you don't, you're going to kill yourself.