Phobia! Part 2.5

Or how about airplanes! I could go on and on about how gross airplanes are! Maybe it is because I fly fairly regularly (several times a year...tomorrow, in fact!) that I notice and think about yucky airplanes. Have you ever sat down in a seat on an airplane and felt that warm, been-sat-in-by-thousands-of-butts feeling, which then leads you to think about what the other thousands of passengers that sat in that seat did to it? The passengers that got a little airsick, the passengers that needed to use the restroom while the seatbelt light was on and didn’t quite make it, the crumbs, the gum stuck inside every crevice of the seat, etc, etc and on and on! Maybe you don’t think of those things, but I sure do!

And then the whole issue of the smell of the air! Oh, putrescence! [Author’s note: name the movie from which I first learned that word! Hint: very quotable 80’s movie starring a love sick puppy turned pirate and Sean Penn’s ex-wife] The stale smell of the recycled air makes my stomach churn every time I board a plane. The only thing that helps me overcome that nausea is the thought that I am so happy that I am on the plane and not sitting in the airport waiting to board. From one that has spent the night in the airport a couple of times now and other countless hours waiting to board the blessed plane, the “putrescence,” as it were, is sometimes a welcome sign of progress to my final destination.

Another thing that gets me every time I fly is the headrest of the seat…what if the passenger before me had dandruff, or worse—LICE!! From a girl who escaped lice when my little sister brought it home in elementary school and then proceeded to share it with two of my other siblings, I am not about to get lice from an airplane! You might think me paranoid, I mean, who has lice nowadays? But I prefer to say I am cautious. You may now ask what I do to protect my perfect scalp from an infestation while flying and then you would be surprised to find out that I don’t do anything! I just sit there and cringe inside! It is the same with movie theatre seat headrests…I don’t want to look like a germophobic freak by putting something over it, so I just try to forget about it and watch the movie.

[Author’s note: I would like to report that writing this post was very therapeutic for me and while I cringed the entire time, I think it was, in the end, helpful. Additionally, my efforts to hold back on my impulses to protect me from germs are helping me overcome my preoccupation with them and I am now able to repress a lot of my inner cringes. Pat on the back, with a freshly washed hand of course, for me!]

Phobia! Part 2.0

2. Germs! – I have a minor case of germophobia, and where do you find germs? Public places…and where do you find a lot of germs? Arcades. They just simply gross me out. I feel dirty while I am there and just have this unquenchable impulse to feverishly wash my hands over and over until they are clean and sterile. Does that sound a little OCD? I promise, I am not OCD, I just cannot stand the thought of touching an arcade joystick that has probably never been cleaned and has been sneezed on and handled by unhygienic, sweaty and pimply teenage boys that haven’t showered in days, no less washed their hands. I know that arcades are somewhat a thing of the past, but I promise they still exist and people still frequent them. When Kevin and I first started dating, I think I almost ended our relationship when he suggested going to the local nickelcade (talk about a cheap date! Then, I guess, if you knew Kevin, you would think it appropriate!) and I refused to go for the pathetic reason of it grossing me out. Thankfully, I had other things going for me (great personality, cute face, great smile, big brain…I mean, what can I say!) or that would have been it!

I guess I should rephrase that I am not a real germophobe, like I said, I have a minor case…I just get really grossed out by certain things and I am really trying to overcome it. For example, I am not the only one that is grossed out by shopping cart handles! It is people like me that got the grocery stores to provide sanitizer wipes…now even Wal-Mart carries them! I can say, however, that as part of my germophobic therapy, I don’t use the sani -wipes in the grocery store…I cringe every time I clasp the handle as shivers go speeding down my spine, but I walk strongly on knowing that I am slowly, one shopping cart handle at a time, overcoming my germophobia.

This one goes hand in hand with toilet seat covers in restrooms. Growing up in California, ALL restrooms had toilet seat covers and thus I always felt clean in even the dirtiest of restrooms…but then I moved to Utah. In Utah, toilet seat covers, my safety net from the who-knows-what that is on a toilet seat, were nowhere to be found and it was the first time in my life that I had to make the decision between creating my own out of three strips of toilet paper, or (gasp) going without! For the first year of my residency there, I had the routine of placing toilet paper on the seat to protect my precious bum from the terrors lying in wake to attack me while I do my business. But then I met Kevin…and Kevin freed me from the mental germy psychosis that kept me from simply sitting down. Kevin taught me that you cannot get sick from sitting on a toilet seat (although that is not what was really keeping me from baring it…I just think that everyone else’s bare bums are yucky and only mine is clean and sanitary!), that my desk has more bacteria on it than the human waste receptacle (true fact!), and that I am a weirdo by making such a big production out of going to the restroom. Not wanting to be a weirdo, I have since (gasp) gone without in many situations, except in places known for their horrid restrooms like Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, or gas stations, where I am pretty sure they NEVER clean.

[Author’s note: in Virginia they do not have toilet seat covers readily available in public restrooms and I have to admit that I am starting to revert to my old toilet paper ways!]

Phobia! Part 1

I saw recently on my friend Kendra’s blog, a “tag” posting about her fears, joys, obsessions, etc and it got me to thinking about my own fears. Fears can be an interesting thing – sometimes they are created over time through experience, sometimes you are born with them, and other times people purport to have a certain fear in order to get attention. I have seen and heard this time and again. Have you ever been to a fair, carnival, or even a circus and sat behind some annoying teenage couple and heard the gum chewing, hair twirling girl say to her pubescent boy toy that she is “like totally afraid of clowns” and just wanted to kill yourself? From experience, I can say that most people that state they are afraid of clowns are usually just teenage girls looking to get attention from the opposite sex for having a cute and quirky fear that is fun to talk about and gets the idiot boy’s sympathy for her seemingly innocuous yet endearing phobia. I will concede that some people, perhaps people that as young children accidentally wandered into a playing of the movie “It,” are truly and incurably afraid of clowns, but for the most part, I think that exclaiming you are afraid of clowns is just part of the ubiquitously flirtatious dialogue that teenagers spout. [Author’ note: I just looked up clown phobia in Wikipedia and I would like to issue an apology to all of you that are diagnosed with Coulrophobia…if it has a cool Latin name, it must be real!]

Well, enough about other people’s fears, I would like to present to the world, my own fears (some quirky and some serious) in no particular order [Author’s note: in the editing process of this post, I realized that it has gotten a little long and will be further separated into several posts, and as such, only the first of my fears will appear in this post]:

1. Expired Milk – I know that Jerry Seinfeld did a bit on expired milk (what DIDN’T he do a bit on?) in which he talked about not taking chances with expired milk…as if the date stamped on the carton could actually tell you the exact second that the milk was no longer safe for human consumption. I am a total believer in the date on the carton – you do not even THINK about drinking milk past that date! It is as if God himself gave all of us a warning against yucky chunky milk and we need to obey the date! My husband, on the other hand, uses the sniffing method for determining milk expiration…a week past the expiration date, if it still smells okay, he’ll actually drink it! I mean, I have tried this method and I swear that milk always smells funky! He tells me that my mind does this to me and the yucky smell is in my head (and from the smell of the rim of the carton, where you put the lid on), but maybe, just maybe, I have milk expiration psychic powers and the smell is a sign that you just don’t drink it! I mean, really, why chance it? I have a really finicky stomach anyway and I just don’t chance things like expired milk. If Kevin’s stomach weren’t built to withstand a nuclear holocaust (seriously, the man can eat raw chicken and not get sick!) maybe he wouldn’t be so gung-ho about drinking the milk either!