Today’s subject is: Phobias. Ask any person who has one, and he or she will tell you there’s plenty to fear besides fear itself. For example, some people fear confined spaces (claustrophobia); clowns (coulrophobia); the number 13 (triskaidekaphobia); gravity (barophobia); and rectums (proctophobia).
Just to get something straight, a phobia does not only signify fear, but a person’s strong reaction to the feared object or situation. Thus, you may be afraid of mutant rectum attacks from space, but a proctophobe will do anything to avoid rectums, whether they are mutant and alien or just plain old earth butts. The mere thought of coming into contact with a rectum induces an anxiety attack in proctophobes, who turn to jelly at the thought of being proctologists. (You may feel free to quote this essay in any papers you submit to medical journals.)
Sufferers of phobias often experience panic attacks that are brought on by exposure to the trigger (for example, a giant hairy spider that is slowly crawling over your chest and making its way to either your jugular vein or your carotid artery, whichever happens to be closer). When you have a panic attack, your body produces a chemical called “adrenaline.” This gets you ready to either flee from the giant spider or fight it. Naturally, of course, since your legs have stopped working and all thought processes have ceased, adrenaline is not particularly helpful. In fact, a panic attack is really your body’s way of saying: “Come here. I want to kill you.”
Most of these names are in their native Latin, Greek, or Klingon. That’s not to say that scientists who name these phobias (realjobophobes) have no sense of humor. Take, for example, “Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.” This 36-letter, tongue-in-cheek term means a fear of long words. Those scientists will sure get a good laugh when the Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobes hunt them down like prey.
But phobias are not something to be laughed at, unless they’re really, really funny (such as the fear of amnesia, which you would promptly forget about as soon as you got amnesia). I, myself, have emetophobia, a fear of vomiting. I do not find this funny, especially since it has made me paranoid. Eating out, eating in, or eating with some other preposition is very difficult when you suspect your food is tainted.
Me: Are you sure this is cooked all the way through?
Waiter: It’s a salad.
Me: I know you secretly wiped chicken rectum on it.
And sushi? I’d rather fly Air Jihad than step within ten feet of a sushi bar. Do you know why? Because they don’t cook the food. They serve it raw, which is tantamount to ordering some McColi. This is a debate my friends and I have time and again. They argue it’s fresh, and therefore free of illness. I argue that they could eat freshly dropped cow poo and it would still make them sick. Neither side has won, but consider this: Four out of five doctors recommend cooking meat before eating it. The fifth doctor would have agreed, but was unfortunately indisposed throwing up blood.
Don’t even get me started on those salmonella lovers who store food past its freshness date. Whatever government agency that is in charge of food spoilage didn’t put a date there for kicks. If your mayonnaise expired three months ago and you try to pass it off on me, I will personally make sure your next sushi experience goes horribly awry. You may wind up with eels in orifices you never anticipated. Good luck explaining that to your proctologist.
What truly riles me is when, occasionally, a parent or “friend” of an emetophobe tries to use experience as a cure. “Well,” she says to herself while slaughtering a goat for Black Mass, “perhaps a bout of food poisoning is just the thing to cure him of his silly fear. He’ll realize how pleasant nausea and vomiting are and the problem will be solved.” So she undercooks the chicken a bit and little Jimmy turns violently ill. Killing these kinds of people falls under the category of justifiable homicide.
I digress. I’d like to end this piece by mentioning a discovery I made during my research: I am fearful. This isn’t to say that I have many phobias; rather, as I perused the lists of phobias on the Internet, I found many that struck close to home. It is reasonable, in my opinion, to be scared of clowns, ventriloquist’s dummies, wax figures, stairs, dentists, dolls, crossing bridges, horses, and enclosed spaces. That isn’t indicative of irrationality. It’s perfectly normal.
…Isn’t it?
