Pantophobia

Mimes scare me. And don’t even let me start on clowns. How on earth people can find a person in pasty white makeup entertaining is beyond me. I know it’s crazy, but I’m always convinced that their skins are that chalk white due to some obscure flesh eating bacteria that causes the skin to flake and infect the rest of us in a manner not unlike that of anthrax.

The thing is, I have many irrational fears and I’d be worried about myself if they weren’t so damned amusing. Few things are funnier than when at a social event I explain to my table mates that I avoid balloons in the event they burst and shatter my glasses thereby driving shards of glass into my eyes. It’s funny because invariably: a) the decorations would consist of a ridiculous amount of air-filled rubber and b) the people around me would be wearing eye-glasses. Thus far only a few people have pointed out that bursting balloons are incapable of providing the force necessary to break spectacles. I am therefore secure in the knowledge that psychiatrists everywhere are turning a profit because of me.

Living in a country which has little to no regard for its animal population, whether stray or otherwise, has made me near phobic about crossing the Priority Bus Route. Especially during peak hours and at night. Especially in the three inch heels I am so very, very fond of. Every time I have to cross that stretch of asphalt, I am absolutely certain that my left heel will break when I am smack in the middle of the road. At the precise moment I realise I am thus incapacitated, the traffic light would change to green. Of course at the head of the line would be a bus. One of those articulated ones driven by the clichéd frustrated, underpaid, overworked P.T.S.C. drivers who being so intent on getting his cargo of likewise clichéd unruly, indisciplined school children to Arima would not have noticed my hobbling efforts to get out of the way. To make matters worse, since the earthquake, I’ve noticed that a once insignificant crack in the road has widened enough to catch the thin heels of my shoes. See where I’m going with this?

I recently found an online study which merely reiterated what my papa has been saying for years: facing your fears is the only way to release yourself from them. That’s all well and good, but I think that particular concept works only on pansies who are afraid of trifling things like snakes, and terrorists. And too besides, in the event I do get rid of these fears, more will just rush in to fill the space and I don’t think those will be as entertaining as the ones I have now. I mean, have you taken a look at the news lately?