PHOBIAS AND WHO CAN I BLAME THEM ON

Who can I blame all my weirdo phobias on? It wouldn’t be fair to blame my parents, they have been nothing but wonderful. I mean, I could, but that would just be wrong.

I could blame Gary. Let’s face it; life with him was not serene. As it is, I still have nightmares about those days, only in present tense. But my phobias, I don’t think so, not all of them anyway. Some of them are just so odd and so far from the mainstream that I can’t come up with anything that would link them to my past. Who knows, maybe Dr. Phil could shed some light on them. Oh wait, I think I’m afraid of him too.

Let’s take feet as an example. Feet are harmless; they don’t have teeth, a mind of their own, or an agenda to make your life miserable. So, what is my fear of feet all about? Not other people’s feet, just mine.

I am 50 years old and this summer is the very first year since I was a teenager that I would wear flips; or as my mother called them when we were growing up, go-aheads. I have no idea where that came from and have never heard it from anyone else.

Anyway, the company I am employed with set a goal, we reached it, and our reward was a trip to Mexico with a guest, all expenses paid. How cool is that? Well Mexico is hot and I would not really be able to walk around the beach and pool in my sneakers and socks.

Socks are very important to me also. So, talking with the five women I work with, it was decided that I would buy a pair of flips and wear them to work to get used to them, and used to people looking at my feet.


I have delivered three children with socks on, I go to my OB/GYN, get naked and in the stirrups spread eagle, but I have socks on. My feet are never bared to the public.

So, step one, I purchased three pairs of flips. The first day that I wore them to work, my heart was pounding so fast it was a miracle that I didn’t drop dead right then and there. But, I made it through the day, no one laughed at me and I didn’t die.

Things were progressing.

The next step was for me to get a pedicure. That was going to take some doing. The thought of someone looking and touching my feet was almost too much for me to handle. But, I am a mature woman and this is something that I could overcome.
NOT. All the ladies of Andantex (where I work) and I were going to go together to get our pedicures followed by dinner.

Now mind you, it came out at a later date that we would be walking into the bar/restaurant with flips on, if not the cotton between our toes. It appears that the polish needs time to dry, thus making it necessary not to cover up the toes immediately after the pedicure. I don’t think so. But, I was assured that this was going to be fun. Forget it, it never happened.

The first date that we had was cancelled because a few of the ladies couldn’t make it at the last minute. The next date was decided on and the closer the day came, the more agitated I got. While talking about it to Mary Ann and Deborah at work one afternoon, I actually started to hyperventilate and it took everything I could not to cry. I kid you not; I was starting to tear up.

There are words for people like me. Anyway, I was explaining to them that I had not been sleeping because I could not stop thinking about this fun day that we were all going to have. Mary Ann looked at me and told me that it was crazy to go through with this, so it was decided then that I didn’t have to get one. I was off the hook. I immediately calmed down, got my breathing back to normal and was so fucking relieved that you would have thought that I was spared the electric chair.

I was actually so relieved that it didn’t occur to me to be embarrassed at my reaction and fear for our upcoming jaunt.

That was an honest and true reaction to my getting a pedicure, but looking back on that I ask, how stupid and immature can you be? Feet, we are talking about feet. I just don’t know where this comes from. I know that Gary always laughed at my feet and it was an issue that used to cause me great distress. He would embarrass me all the time about it. That is when I started to wear sneakers and socks all the time. Come to think of it, Donny laughed at my feet too. He told me if I wore sandals to a wedding he wouldn’t take me.

Jesus Christ, what is with these guys, I don’t’ have the most beautiful feet in the world, but they aren’t hooves. But to get so distressed about a lousy pedicure and feet in general is just plain moronic. I need to overcome that one if for no other reason than it is just so ridiculous.

Others include heights, which I have had since I was ten. Bridges, I hate bridges. It goes beyond the height of them though. I am convinced that when I am on a bridge it will collapse or we will crash through the guard rail to our deaths. My poor husband forgot once and drove over the Driscoll Bridge in the far right lane. I leaned over so far so, as to make sure the car did not plunge into the Raritan River, that I almost ended up on his lap.

So, if you are going to go over the side of the bridge, just lean over because the weight distribution will change and your 200 pound body moving over to the other side of the car will stop the two ton vehicle from going over the side, right? Makes sense to me.

Car washes; who the hell is afraid to drive through a car wash? You guessed it, me. If I am not driving, I love it. I just get such a kick out of the colors the soap makes and the suds. But, I have never, ever, gone through one alone. Am I afraid I will die, get attacked, get lost, nope. I can’t explain it, don’t understand it and I probably never will. Actually, I’m not even sure I want to know. That might be too weird for even me.

Flying to Mexico. Once again I am convinced that because I am on the plane, it is going to go down. I didn’t want to sit next to the window because if it blew out I would get sucked out. I didn’t want to sit near the engine because if the window blew out I would get sucked into the engine.

I won’t go to the bathroom on a plane because I am afraid that my ass will get stuck in the toilet in some bizarre, one of a kind accident. I am also afraid to get up and walk on a plane because I don’t want my weight to cause the plane to shift. (Hey – if I can keep a car from careening off a bridge, who knows?) Now, I know that can’t happen. I am not that crazy or stupid, but I can’t get that thought out of my head, that I could actually tip the damn plane.

Comments like that make people look at me like I am either a nut or looking for attention. I wish it were for the attention. These are very real fears for me and I just don’t know how to get over them. Logic tells me that they can’t happen, but my mind won’t let it go. Not good.

I have been on two cruises in my life. I love them. As much as I am afraid of falling overboard and getting eaten by a shark, I love to cruise. My fear of what I am about to share with you makes me worry for days on end before we arrive at the ship. It is so crazy, even I have a hard time comprehending that I am actually losing sleep over it, but I still do, to the point of nightmares.

The ship is approximately eight feet from the dock, right? The gangplank that you need to cross over on in order to get on the ship goes over the water. You can see that water below as you are walking over to the ship.

Are you with me so far? If you were to fall off that gangplank and into the water, oh my God, typing it now, safe in my home on dry land, I am shaking and have goose bumps. I can’t imagine anything worse than falling into that water between the ship and the dock. Awful, just awful. I don’t think that is a common fear and where it came from, I have no idea.

I drive home from work the same way every day. If I think I might want to change routes because of traffic or just for new scenery, I have to convince myself that by changing the way I am going is not going to insure that I get into an accident. By simply changing my route, I am tempting fate.

My mind works in very strange ways.

It wouldn’t be fair to blame all of this on Gary, but I think that those days had to have some bearing on how I am today. Always tense, always fearing the unknown. Maybe that’s it, the unknown.

Now, if you can explain this next phobia and fear of mine to me, you are good. It is real, is scares me to death, even knowing it can’t happen. Well, 95% of me tells me it can’t happen. There is still that 5% that you just don’t know.

I mean really, who the hell really knows what could happen given the right circumstances. No one can.

Picture this. You are working at night in a large, very open office area with a loft that contains about 10 offices, several cubbies and a very large open floor space for the machines downstairs.

There was a time when I worked with Brittany cleaning that office building. Many late nights I would clean alone. It was on those nights that one of my worst fears would grab hold of my mind, and it would take everything I had to get through the night and get the hell out of there.

This office building, warehouse has cameras all over inside and out. This is to protect the employees and the company from abuse and theft. When I am working I am constantly looking the monitors that are placed throughout the office area. I can see the parking lot, the warehouse and the offices. I find myself staring at these screens. Am I looking for an intruder who plans on stealing from this company? Am I looking for the mad rapist who knows that I am there is just waiting for his chance to have his way with me.

Nope, zombies.

Yup I am afraid of the undead. Absolutely cannot shake this fear. The thought of having my flesh ripped off my body, corpses taking bites out of me while I am alive is almost more that I can take. I watch those screens just waiting to see one of them, with that awful walk and gray skin searching for a live victim. I have to force myself away from looking at the monitor. Taking the garbage out to the dumpsters is always fun, waiting to get ambushed by this band of undead.

It doesn’t help when my very comical daughter sends me a text message, knowing that I am there alone and frightened, tell me that an escaped madman is on the loose and consuming human flesh. I just love that child.

It also, is always on my mind when I am there alone that horrible movie, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. My honor roll friend, who was supposed to be the smart one, was babysitting with me one night many years ago at the house NEXT FRIGGIN DOOR to my parent’s house. We decided, because we were idiots, to watch NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. We were so frightened, when the parents came home, we ran, arms entwined around each other lest the zombies would get us, into my parent’s house and up the stairs to my room. We were in the tenth grade, hell, what did we know.

Some of these fears make no sense so it is very hard to explain how in one breath I can tell my family that all is well and we need to keep our faith (and really mean it), and in the next breath tell someone that I am afraid to go in the ocean because it is a certainty that I will get bitten by the one shark in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New Jersey.

I make my friends laugh, my kids think I am nuts, and as Brittany would say, “Mom, you have serious issues.” I know I do and I think long and hard about them and try to convince myself to change, to stop being so weird. It works for a day or two and then I slip right back to the person I guess I really am.

One day I will have to learn to accept myself for who I am. To embrace my idiosyncrasies and let my mind wrap around all my little oddities, and then strangle the shit out of them.