Wednesday 20 June 2012

My top five completely irrational phobias




5. Standing on chairs.  This is particularly weird because I’m absolutely fine with heights in general.  Specifically, I am concerned about falling backwards off chairs, meaning that when I had to do a play once where I spent almost the entire time standing on a chair it was one of the most terrifying periods of my life.

4. Being talked to on public transport.  This is because I am (a) very shy with strangers and (b) too British to say if I’m feeling uncomfortable.

3. Brushes being dragged across carpet.  One of the scariest things that ever happened to me working as a catering assistant was when a colleague dropped a tray of champagne glasses on a carpet and we had to use a brush to clean it up.  I had to feign needing the toilet so that I could escape, otherwise I probably would have just stood there screaming.

2. The skin that forms on milk.  Once I merely saw that some milk had formed a skin and I fainted. 

1. Dead spiders (live ones are fine.) There’s something about the way that dead spiders crumple up that makes me absolutely terrified of them beyond anything else in this world; one time I accidentally TOUCHED one and, after being literally frozen with fear for 40 minutes, the first thing I did was scrape all the skin off the part of my finger that had touched the spider until I bled.  

3 comments:

  1. I love that you shared these! I used to gag on grapes unless they were peeled and be afraid of rocks (mainly because they might have had worms under them, or more likely skeletons.) Your description of fainting at milk made me lol because it was so familiar. Thanks for this!

    (BTW, being afraid of brushes on rugs isn't irrational at all, it makes the worst sound after fingernails on teflon.)

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  2. You scraped the skin off your finger?!

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  3. Until I bled, yes! I didn't scrape it down to the bone or anything...

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