Phobias

I read somewhere that there are as many phobias as there are "things"! Well, I have a few. My main one is claustrophobia. I know, pretty common and not very exotic. But please do not ever describe your MRI to me or I'll start breathing funny.

Another one I've had since I was a child is fear of quicksand. I don't even know if there's a name for that phobia. In fact, I tried to look it up and discovered that I'm not the only person in the world with this fear! I think it stems from some old 1950's movie I saw once where this woman went totally under. I've never even been close to quicksand as far as I know. And my guess is that this isn't a major health threat. But I fear it none-the-less.

However, there is one phobia I have a bit of control over. Again, I don't think this one has a name so I'll make it up - messyeyebrowphobia! I literally have a mild panic attack when I see someone with really messy eyebrows or, worse yet, see someone rub their eyebrow against the grain with their finger! I mean, why in the world would anyone do that?? Of course, Ed does it periodically just to see me squirm. But he's smart enough to quickly remedy the situation. And he often trims his eyebrows to save me from angst.

My daughter is afflicted with this same condition. You'll often see one or both of us smoothing our own eyebrows when a person does the unthinkable (please refer to above - I just can't write it again....). When I worked at Stanford there was a woman physician who would come into my office to chat. She really was a great person, but she had this habit of playing with her eyebrows and pushing the hairs the wrong way. By the time she left I would have major agita.

Spiders are no problem. Not afraid of heights. No problem with airplanes. But PLEASE keep me out of tight spaces and keep those damn eyebrows neat! Oh, yeah, and if you have a map with quicksand locations that I can avoid, that would be great!