Your darkest fear?

Modern Phobias - a litany of contemporary fears

- Tim Lihoreau

What are you afraid of?

 You might have two answers. One that you would toss out for public examination if there was an ice breaker game and then one that is so terrifying or embarrassing you would never readily admit it. Hermione Grainger and I do not share the same fears. I haven’t read all the Harry Potter books. I know that makes me a leper and an outcast of my generation, but I think in the first book, there is a scene where some of the character’s deepest and darkest fears are revealed in front of their entire class. Hermione’s fear is not getting the highest grades on her assessment and that makes my straight B grade self chuckle. Being a straight B student is nothing to be ashamed of and I’m not. While doing well academically is something to aspire to and uphold, I know that academic grades a man does not make. Because I’ve never been in the struggle for top of the class at school instead I was working hard in the pool below to slot in those B’s, this fear is not one that I strongly relate to.

What I am afraid of are cockroaches and scary amusement park rides. If you go upside down, you feel as if you could fall out or you plunge towards the ground it is not natural and it is very, very wrong. I have however been on three of these rides in my life time so I think it is something I can overcome in the hour of greatest need. Cockroaches on the other hand are my kryptonite. You can waltz spiders, geckos, lizards and snakes past me and I won’t blink an eye. However, put me in a ten meter radius of a cockroach, dead or alive, and my strong, capable persona crumbles into a high pitched shrieking, shaking and terrified female. One of my students slipped me a plastic cockroach in a book and my scream would have been heard in New South Wales. She was not remorseful and in fact she was laughing so hard she literally fell off her chair, a fine example of teacher abuse.

Now onto the book. "Modern Phobias - a litany of contemporary fears" by Tim Lihoreau gives a name to some of the modern person's daily fears. Here are some of my favorites: 

• Aedificatorphobia - fear of builders
• Ceterinfanophobia - fear of other people's children
• Fabaphobia - fear of ordering in coffee shops
• Fortavocophobia - fear of speaking loudly while wearing headphones
• Idemophobia - fear of turning up in the same outfit as someone else
• Imitorphobia - fear of talking to someone in their accent
• Maginvalophobia - fear of being visited by an MP in hospital
• Perdetophobia - fear of having not saved one's work
• Stolidophobia - fear of starting a crossword in public
• Vilimusophobia - fear of lift music
• Abcellophobia - fear of leaving a toilet cubicle
• Oviphobia - fear of jumping on the bandwagon

                             

 If you feel embarrassed that you suffer from any of these phobias do you feel any better that they have an official name? Go now and claim as much sympathy as you can. 

These phobias make me laugh! But now on a deep and serious note, because you all know I am a deep and serious person. Should I laugh at people with these phobias? I know I don’t appreciate it when someone laughs at me when I am shaking over a cockroach situation. Are these phobias though, so far-fetched and ridiculous that laughing at them is what they deserve?

This post is finishing with more questions than answers. My English teachers would be proud.