What Are You Afraid Of?

I read somewhere that to prevent yourself from having trouble getting to sleep, you should keep lights low in the evening, and keep them off after you turn in for the night. So, I have learned to navigate my house in the dark. I'm pretty good at it these days, and have found there's usually enough light to maneuver from either an Indi-Glo night light, or outdoor lights that filter through my blinds.

My kids, however, have not inherited this ease with the night. Ask them to retrieve a favorite toy after lights-out, and they will - without fail - flip on every single light switch they pass on their journey. Guess who has to go back down and flip them back off? Though, in all fairness, I remember way back when: leaping from light switch to bed at night, then pulling the covers over my head, waiting for my heart to stop pounding... and then I turned twenty-seven...

That got me thinking about fears, so I did a little research to find some of the more... unusual... phobias out there. Here's a representative sample:

Anatidaephobia - the fear that wherever you are, a duck is watching you (I kid you not...)

Arachibutyrophobia - the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth (fairly valid, all things considered...)

Amathophobia - fear of dust (Don't come to my house if you suffer from this one!)

Walloonphobia - fear of Walloons (Now, this one I looked into a little more - Walloon is a Romance language spoken as a second language by some in Wallonia, Belgium. Who knew?)

Zemmiphobia - fear of the great mole rat (Guess anyone who suffers from this one shouldn't watch Kim Possible - A Sitch in Time...)

Mageirocophobia - the fear of cooking (hmmm... the kitchen does creep me out a little, but maybe it's just that skillet that hasn't come clean for two days, now...) 

Alektophobia - fear of chickens (Oooh!  All you alektophobics out there may not want to visit Kathi's I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus blog- but everyone else should... she's a riot!)

Alliumphobia - fear of garlic (Think of all the poor alliumphobics out there mislabeled as vampires...)

Eosophobia - fear of daylight (Yes, well, if you're alliumphobic and eosophobic, you may have some 'splainin' to do...)

Pentheraphobia - fear of one's mother-in-law ('fess up now people, you know who you are...)

Vestiophobia - fear of clothes (Is this why so many toddlers delight in disrobing at the most inappropriate times?)

Gymnophobia - fear of nudity (So, if you put a vestiophobe and a gymnophobe in the same room together, do they cancel each other out??)

Ataxophobia - fear of disorder or untidiness (Definitely not me - but if this is you, well, again, maybe you won't want to visit my humble abode...)

Samhainophobia - fear of Halloween (movie: yes! holiday: not!)

Syngenesophobia - fear of relatives (hmmm... well, not all of them...)

Dromophobia - fear of crossing the road (Crud! All this time, we've been asking the wrong question. That chicken never crossed the road at all...)

Ombrophobia - fear of rain or being rained on (So, I guess visiting Seattle would be out of the question...)

Kathisophobia - fear of sitting down (Hey! Is this why Hemmingway is said to have written while standing up, with his typewriter propped on a bookcase? He- What? What's a typewr- You know, typewriter?? Tap-tap-tappatiy-tap, zzzzip, tingggg?  Those things writers used to- Oh, never mind...)