Fear Factory

We all have our fears. Irrational or not, clinical or not, some of these fears are worth knowing. It may even surprise you that your instant fright upon seeing a rather harmless roach is something that you share with millions of people around the world and can be clinically diagnosed as blattaphobia. I too have my own list of absurd phobias and because I have all the time in the world to sit and watch the world go by, I’ve also developed the idea to examine my day-to-day oddness.

I try to keep fit by the simple walk-jog-run routine and almost every afternoon as I go about my exercise, I also face the challenge of my superficial fear of bird droppings or bird poop. Yes, bird poop. I admire birds in flight, dang, I love birds indeed but I’m totally horrified of bird droppings. And mind you, birds do indiscriminately drop poop. So just imagine, a fresh, almost warm sticky poop landing right into your face right in the middle of a leisurely walk and then tell me if I am being completely hostile of bird poop or not.

I also happen to fear manholes. Manholes of any form, size and shape are completely feared and thus avoided by moi’. This phobia stems from an accident that happened many years ago. Matter of fact, it was exactly 13 years ago. I was then rushing to my early morning C.A.T class. I didn’t want to be late since we all know that C.A.T. officers are quite serious on reprimanding late-comers. And then it happened, I trusted, as I’ve realised, a poorly constructed wooden piece of a manhole and I went all the way down the hole with cuts and bruises from the sudden impact of my entire body weight as it collapses the wooden structure. Thankfully, oh, thankfully the hole was dry and almost empty but the smudges and smell of drying dark mud was unbelievably awful. And so the story of the irrational fear of manholes was born. It has been indeed quite a while since I’ve confidently stepped on a manhole. The memory never left me.

And the last worth mentioning is my fear of being spat at. Sounds odd and utterly bizarre, isn’t? But yeah, I walk with this fear every single day of my life. I didn’t realise that it was something that I can’t get over with until I pondered on the matter today. It may seem funny that I actually abhor the thought moreover fear the actual possibility of being randomly spat at but I do. Geez.haha.