What phobias do you have---snakes, spiders, loneliness, crowds, claustrophobia, heights, flying, backing into doorknobs naked, fear of fear itself? What?

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), May 15, 2001

Answers

I'm working on the shadow thing.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), May 15, 2001.

Good one Lars! (as usual)

I got that spider thing goin'. 'Specially the ones that are stretched out between a couple trees and ya walk right thru the damned thing!

FREAKS ME OUT!!

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), May 15, 2001.

I'm definitely a dentophobe. No, not an irrational fear of teeth, but of dentists.

Is there one for celibacy?

-- Rich (howe9@shentel.net), May 15, 2001.

When I was a kid, I was told that God was always watching me all the time. I was told He could read my mind and knew all my thoughts. I was told that God was especially interested in catching me out when I did bad things or had bad thoughts. I was told God might just decide for me to die at any moment, for example in the middle of the night or while I was walking home from school. It was explained to me that God was pretty keen on punishing me as soon as I died, if I hadn't done everything required to square things with Him. So basically I could die at any moment and go straight to hell, my soul gibbering like a bat down to eternal perdition.

The Bible said that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. If that's the case, then I was one awfully wise kid.

-- Miserable SOB (misery@misery.com), May 15, 2001.

I'm STILL watching you!

-- Got my (I@on.U), May 15, 2001.

Why, come to think of it, I'm not afraid of anything!

-- Debra (Thisis@it.com), May 15, 2001.

Yes, you are afraid to admit to being afraid. Contact me immediately.

-- (Dr_Vinnie_Boombox@Feelgood.Clinic), May 15, 2001.

Deano--

Imagine how the fly feels?

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), May 15, 2001.

Y3K

-- The Toner (the.toner@home.com), May 16, 2001.

Cystoscopies. Enough to make you wish you were a girl.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), May 16, 2001.

Enough of them and you WILL be a girl.

-- Just (A@Kodak.Moment), May 16, 2001.

Somestime I goes fer cystos jus to get sumone to play wid me down there

-- (guy@home.alone), May 16, 2001.

http://www.phobialist.com/

-- I'm afraid (of phobi@s.thats all), May 16, 2001.

I'm afraid to drink dog piss from a rusty hubcap.

-- (stupid@doo.mer), May 16, 2001.

Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. -- Victor Hugo

-- (bygrace@thru.faith), May 16, 2001.

Pencil me in for a fear of FALLING, Lars. I'd at one time thought this was a fear of heights, but I soon realized that my Klutz gene was dominant and FALLING from a height was REALLY the thing I feared. Six inches doesn't compare to 600 feet in the FALL department.

I don't know that I'd consider this a phobia. It's simply a reality. Two of my three kids acquired the Klutz gene. My oldest daughter walked from her apartment to a pool last summer and the friend she was with said, "Do you realize that you've hurt yourself 13 times just walking from the apartment to the pool?"

My son acquired it, as well. I watched him fall off his bicycle [into traffic] four times when we bicycled through the Island of Women in Mexico. He fell down 45 times on our trip to Europe. He always said, "It's the gym shoes. They Stick!" When I saw him in Bergen, too close to the edge of a cliff for my comfort, I said, "Son...come away from the edge." He said, "MMOOMMMM...I'm NOT going to fall!" He then went SPLAT [fortunately in the direction away from the edge. The second kid moves around like a gazelle.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 16, 2001.

Oh God, Lars. "Backing into doorknobs naked"...? I've never heard of that. When I think of all the times I might have backed into a doorknob naked and just didn't ... gosh, now I REALLY have something to fear...wait a minute...I'm too short for a doorknob to endanger my ... ok, everything's fine now...the doorknob won't get me...not where it counts, anyway...

-- helen (ment@l.ward), May 16, 2001.

Jeez, Helen. I had to check. Doorknobs hit my tail bone [which I assume is the bone referenced in Jonathan's threads on evolution, only I think he used a more scientific name.]

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 17, 2001.

nightmares.

-- (bygrace@thru.faith), May 17, 2001.

Door knobs are not to be feared unless they are very cold and you are a male over 6 feet.

Then be very afraid.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), May 17, 2001.

Lars,

I could swear I read about the doorknob phobia years ago in an abnormal psych text, but I can't for the life of me find it. It seems that three people in the world have been diagnosed with a phobia of 'doorknobs hitting them in the butt'. Does /anyone/ know what the name of this phobia is?

....Whirl

-- (whirl@erinyes.org), September 24, 2001.

adorabuttplugaphobia

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), September 24, 2001.

doornuranus?

But yers waz funnier unc :-)

-- sumer (I@aint.sayin), September 24, 2001.

The only thing I'm afraid of is fear itself. No, wait it's moths.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), September 25, 2001.

I have a vague uneasiness when near an icepick.

-- (Leon Trotsky@Marxism.schism), September 26, 2001.