Welcome to "Guess My Phobia"

        I have several highly phobic friends. They can’t be in tight spaces (claustrophobia), fly on airplanes (aerophobia), or be atop a high cliff (acrophobia).  Two have ophidiophobia, fear of snakes. I’m not wild about spiders inside (arachnophobia), though I love to see them and their amazing webs outside.

          Are you afraid of anything? I mean, we’re all afraid of an armed attacker, right?  But I mean something irrational. In case you’d like to add some color and pizzazz to your personality, here are some quirky ones you can adopt:

Anthophobia: Fear of flowers, which lets you off the hook for buying expensive ones.

Barophobia: Fear of gravity, which puts you in a precarious position unless you’re a permanent astronaut.

Cibophobia: Fear of food, which can help you avoid being served items you don’t like, but it won’t explain an expanding waistline.

Ephebiphobia: Fear of teenagers. But in my opinion, this one is completely rational and should be shared by the entire populace.

Chromophobis: Fear of colors. Good luck finding peace of mind with this one.

Octophobia: No, it isn’t fear of octopuses. It’s fear of the number 8. I wonder how people landed on that particular number to fear. Does it make people fear times and dates? On the other hand, you have a built-in timer for every eight minutes.

There’s even phobophobia, the fear of phobias, in which case you wouldn’t even be reading this, I guess.

There’s even one you might already have, and not know it. It’s Fragapanophobia, the fear of birthdays. 

People get depressed as theirs approaches, and they don’t want anyone to acknowledge their birthday. I, however, cannot get too much hoopla, so I say bring it on. In fact, today is my actual birthday, so Happy Birthday to Me!

Celebrate by checking out my life hacks right here!

Be Very Afraid

          It has come to my attention that there is a universal fear of garbage disposals.  Here we are, constantly in the kitchen (where it lives!) yet we cannot keep our pulses from racing just a tad more, every time we flip the switch to run it.

          Noisy, chomping, growling—it’s as if we have a Tyrannosaurus Rex chained under the counter, and if we don’t back away quick enough, he’ll swallow us whole.

          Why do we do this to ourselves? Why, after decades of living in the modern world, do we still feel a creeping nervousness whenever we put something down that ominous black hole?

          Mind you, there are people who will jump out of airplanes, surf in shark-infested waters, and walk down dark alleys, who still pull their hand back as quickly as they can, before turning on that scary beast.

          Maybe it’s because our mothers all told us not to stick our fingers down there or they’ll get cut off.  There’s a wild, chomping, noisy monster just inches away, ready to grab us and chew us to bits. And that advice rings in our heads still today.

           So, is it true?  Will we lose our hand if we get too close?  Well, I did some research.  It turns out that this device does not have the whirling blades a blender has—instead it uses impellers (lugs) and shredders that look like this:

          BUT THINK ABOUT WHAT IT DOES TO CHICKEN!!  Do you really think this device knows the difference between you and a drumstick?   Why take a chance?  The flywheel spins at nearly 2,000 rotations per minute.  That’s enough to mangle and bruise anybody, at the very least.

          You may have thought I was going to dispel a myth here, but I say err on the side of fear and panic.  No, there are not sharp knives down there.  But there’s stuff.  Whirling, metal stuff.   

So stay back, grab a sword or a sharp stick for a weapon—just in case—and then breathe a sigh of relief when you can finally turn off the switch.  You will live another day.

Wanna know what’s safe to put down a disposal, and if lemon rinds will really clean it?  Check out my YouTube Mom video!