Have you ever
been driving through a canyon and they’ve got these signs posted that show a
little car at the base of a cliff with a gigantic boulder falling on it? This is my nightmare. This is my fear. I feel that I am that little car just waiting to be squashed flat
by a lurking boulder looking for a victim.
My question now is this: is there a formal name for the fear of being
squashed by a boulder while driving your car through a canyon?
There are many
phobias that afflict people. How many
are untitled? How many are still
waiting to be discovered by some pointy-headed grad student looking for a
thesis to write? I know that my phobia
of being squashed flat by a boulder while driving my car through a canyon is
real… so why does it remain nameless? I
might call it A-rock-na-phobia. I know,
I know, it’s very close to arachnophobia, the
fear of spiders. But I am not afraid of
spiders. Well, ok, I am afraid of
spiders falling on me from the ceiling or spiders jumping on my face but that’s
another story.
I have another
phobia. Perhaps you also suffer from
the same fear that I do. However, if
you do we can’t really discuss it or have a support group dedicated to it
because it has no name. I fear that
birds don’t just poop at random as they fly along. I think that birds choose their targets. I mean, if you were a bird, wouldn’t you?
I also have a
fear of people that have perfect hair, like Mitt Romney. That’s just not right, you know? Sometimes I think that maybe people with
perfect hair aren’t really human at all.
Maybe they’re robots or life sized ventriloquist dummies. Speaking of ventriloquist dummies I also have
a phobia about ventriloquist dummies taking over the world and turning us into
their dummies. Now that would be
creepy.
I can’t stand
nose rings. Don’t ask me why, I just
can’t stand them, ok? I have a phobia
that I won’t be able to control myself and that I’ll start pulling people’s
nose rings out in public. That would be
quite embarrassing but somehow I think it might be worth it.
Sometimes when I
watch TV someone will say something on a program but I don’t quite catch what
they say. I have a fear of rewinding
live TV to re-listen to the dialog because I think I might miss something really
important like the news breaking in to announce that ChiCom nuclear missiles
are inbound or zombie apocalypse has started or something like that. How crappy would that be? You spend your entire life preparing for
zombie apocalypse and you end up getting bitten because you were re-watching the
punch line of a Seinfeld episode. Don’t
even talk to me about DVD movies.
And what about
the ChiComs in general? What do you
call a phobia for a fear of ChiComs?
ChiComophobia? I dunno, that
sounds lame if you ask me. I also have
a fear of Mongolians but I usually just lump them in with the ChiComs.
Fear of spoons;
fear of wooden choo-choo trains; jack-in-the-boxes; mimes; fear of very large
ants; Regis Philbin and Oprah (but only when they’re together); fear of
electric light bulbs exploding in your hand when you screw them into the
socket. None of these have names that
I’m aware of but nevertheless, they are real.
I propose a
single term to encompass all of these fears and any others that remain
nameless. I propose to call this
affliction "Harrumphophobia."
So
remember, the next time you face one of your own fears, perhaps it is a fear of
paperback books, or a fear of too many choices in the aspirin aisle, don’t be
distressed. Don’t be embarrassed. Face it with a “harrumph” and find something
else to be afraid of. After all, zombie
apocalypse is just around the corner.
Harrumph…
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