Beyond Phobia

What? It's a rational fear. Source: the great Roman Dirge

Everyone has fears, even Daredevil (if you get that reference, what's up my geeky brethren?), some of those fears are rational, others, completely ludicrous and based in paranoid fantasies conjured in the recesses of our brains. We generally call the irrational fears "phobias", but this is inadequate for the ludicrously stupid set of fears I have.

When using the bathroom, I wait until the toilet has stopped flushing, then another beat after that before washing my hands because I fear that somehow the pipes will get crossed and I'll be washing my hands with fecal-infected water. Yes, I KNOW this is intensely stupid. That's what makes it irrational and beyond phobic.

Some sort of social collapse terrifies me. From every piece of pop culture I've seen, as soon as whatever crisis levels out, people start asking, "What did you do before that is useful in the building of our new infrastructure?" My answer, "cycle of menial jobs followed by numbing of depression" doesn't inspire much confidence in a post-apocalyptic landscape. What if I tried, "I'm the cleanest, best roommate anyone has ever had, if you don't count that one time I locked my roommate out because I was getting funky, but to be fair, that same roommate soiled my sheets with some anonymous booty gettin' and had to have them cleaned"? Unskilled idiots such as myself need basic infrastructure. But mostly, I'd be terrified of what would happen to my hair without dedicated employees to the cause of properly-coiffed hair.


I fear being invited over to a couple's house for dinner. What if they're swingers, luring you into their sex-den? Watch yourself, swingers are lurking around every corner.

Wheelchair Rugby source...or you can watch Murderball.

In the still of the night, when the grips of slumber loosen, the grip of fear takes hold, the fear of a giant blue crystal, jettisoned from a passenger airplane that comes hurtling out of the heavens toward the earth impaling itself on a sleeping me. No, not impaling me to death, but paralyzing me from the waist down. Yes, including all sexy fun feelings down there. Then, when I join a wheelchair rugby league, I'll have to tell my teammates how I came to be paralyzed, and they'll all laugh at my expense and say I was "poo-ralyzed".

As you can see, my fears aren't relegated to your standard fears of heights, bees, "GOO! CLOWNS!" or even the odd little person. No, the things that go bump in the night are much more elaborate.


What are you afraid of...and it better not be this "fear of failure" or "fear of death" nonsense. Give me your deep, complex fears.