I can understand a fear of heights, or open water, or even elephants- What about those phobias that make no sense? Trypophobia is a great example; a fear of repetitive patterns of holes- A sufferer of trypophobia looks at an empty beehive- Their heart rate goes up and their mouth goes dry- Are our brains short circuiting? It really seems these days there is a documented phobia for everything from cats to Q-tips- Has that always been the case? Was there an unfortunate peasant in 1456 who had a fear of thatched roofing?

It seems just as our physicians are specializing, so are our maladies- That doesn’t make sense though- Maybe we’re just getting more hyper-aware combined with hyper-sensitive- Trauma-induced phobias make sense- When I was 4(?), I walked face-first into a garden spider’s web- The poor gal scrambled off my face as fast as she could, but left me with a tarantula-sized fear of spiders- What I don’t understand is the phobic that has never encoutered, nor is likely to ever encounter the subject of their fear- Also, what of the completely irrational varities such as the repeating holes above, or the ironic hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia; the fear of long words? I read through some of these and feel like the victim of a practical joke- The fear of balloons? Why, because they might POP? What a mess we are!

Maybe, as the world becomes marginally safer, we are making up for the lack of fears by filling in the blanks with random placeholders- We don’t fear leprosy, road bandits, nor scalping anymore, so have made due with clowns, ducks, and my personal favorite, phobophobia, which is the fear of fear itself- That one would have made FDR’s head spin-

There’s the possibility these phobias are just being invented by grad students that waited until the last minute to decide on a thesis- They promised their duplex-mate 50$ to attest to a previously uncategorized fear, documented it out in fraudulent detail, and walked away with their PHDs- Im going to go with that- Otherwise, we’re headed for disaster at an even faster rate than I imagined- Is there a phobia for that?