Well, we’ve already established (several times) that I am obviously NOT afraid of going to Hell… but that does NOT mean I am completely fearless! (Stop crying, Tazer.) Fortunately, my fears tend toward the… completely ridiculous…
1. Nutcrackers, dolls with teeth and (I’M SORRY!) midgets
This ridiculous fear started with the terror that is nutcrackers (which I inherited from Dear Sweet Mama), then metamorphosed into any doll whose teeth you can see after I saw the movie “Barbarella” where the evil little girls try to get their dolls to eat Jane Fonda (another reason little white girls should never be trusted!), which logically leads into a fear of midgets. Sorry, “little people.” But I figure if I’m fucked up enough to be afraid of an entire group of people, political correctness is the LEAST of my worries! It’s like having a phobia of Frenchmen or something. I feel TERRIBLE about it.
2. The theme music from “Tales from the Darkside”
Toldja they were ridiculous. I honestly CANNOT hear that music without getting freaked the fuck out and having nightmares (thank Goddess for DVR and fast-forward, back when we had to watch things “live” DSM had to make sure I left the room before it came on!) Looking at the creepy photo-negative image they use is not good either, but I can handle that as long as I don’t hear THAT MUSIC!
3. Geese, ducks, any large-ish bird
This one has good reason behind it — a Canada goose once blacked both my eyes when I tried to feed it a barbecue sandwich (maybe he was a Muslim goose and he didn’t eat pork?). Fuckers are STRONG, yo.
4. Locusts/cicadas/whatever the fuck you call those devil bugs
Some of you may already know this story, but when I was a wee tiny Hoody, my elementary school class went on a trip up into the scenic mountains of Wes’BYGAWD Virginny during what (unbeknownst to me) turned out to be one of those 7-year locust outbreaks. Fuckers were EVERYWHERE. And then, as me and my little friend were walking along the trail… a locust landed on my shirt — THUD! And hung on with its horrible feet, and I looked down into its evil red eyes, started screaming, and ran off. Yes, ran away from something that was STILL ON MY SHIRT. And I almost ran off a cliff. So locusts tried to kill me… and they wanted it to look like an ACCIDENT…
5. Disheveled shelves in stores
Like at Christmas or if there’s a blizzard warning or something? And you go in and the bread and shit is all flung to hell and back and you actually have to step OVER items to get around? Yeah, I can’t take that. This is why I stay home on Black Friday and never, EVER go to places like Gabriel Brothers.
AND BONUS, just to freak all y’all out, too:
Those little microscopic bugs that always live on our skin, no matter how much you wash. You’re welcome.
hoodyhoo 
Stupid cicadas and their beady little red eyes. Ick!
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I know, they’re creepy enough AS IT IS — you add those beady red eyes and they’re DEMONIC!
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Thank you for triggering my hand washing OCD. Did a similar dash-and-flail whilst screaming bloody murder when a cockroach ran up my knee sock. Not a good way to start the school day. Can’t STAND the nasty, filthy, little f$%@s.
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at least you were WEARING knee socks… otherwise it would have been on your actual LEG! And then you’d just have to cut that leg plumb off, ’cause that’s never gettin’ clean again!
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Wait, hold on. You are AFRAID of dishelved shelves? Like actual fear? I get the others, as weird as they may be, because every has their weird fears, but do you actually run screaming in terror when items on shelves in stores are not in their proper place? Hoody . . . I think an intervention may be needed.
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I worked at Express briefly after leaving college — I was a goddamned Art History major, what else was I gonna do? — and to this day unfolded shelves fill me with a Joan Crawford level of angst. NO MUTHAFUCKIN’ WIRE HANGERS, BITCHES!!!!!!”
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Like Jen says, it’s probably a holdover from working WAAAAY too long in retail… but I honestly get a little panic attack when shit’s flung about!
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Birds make me uncomfortable. Beady eyes and they don’t have arms- but they are standing up and blech! One of my beloved dachsies tried to bring a dead one into the house last month- I screamed and practically wet myself. This led my adoring husband to ask if the dogs had let a midget in. I’m concerned that hell is full of falconing Midgets…….
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we can’t have been bad enough to deserve midgets with falcons… can we?
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I have to match. Always. Everything HAS to match, or I feel weird and unbalanced. I hate the noise cicadas make, and this morning right near my desk crickets were humping. Ever hear that sound? {shudder} And I was an exterminator! Still bothers me, but I hate rodents the most. All rodents, they are disgusting, and carry disease, and are completely incontinent. Gross.
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what is it about mice (and I presume, rats, but thankfully I’ve never had a rat in the house!) that they have to crap EVERYWHERE??? It’s like the thing with flieswhere they barf whenever they land… and how do you know the crickets were humping? I don’t think I’d know the difference between lonely cricket lookin’ for love and a cricket who has found it!
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it was a rhythmic, more than usual, chirp. and I walked around my desk and there they were! Like ugly 70’s bug porn. Gruesome.
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Motherfucking clowns. Sweet Baby Jesus in a Hot Pocket those things ain’t right.
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Don’t go into a Party City! there is a scary ass clown in there! So, if it’s in my store, it’s in Party City’s everywhere!
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I know the clown of which you speak. I’m still suffering from PTSD after viewing it last Halloween.
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clowns go without saying — I even WAS one for some club in high school (like to keep kids off drugs or something, I don’t remember, I was probably high) AND I WAS SCARED OF MY OWN SELF. And the styrofoam head I had to keep my wig on also — forgive me — “wigged” me out!
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There are not Gabes where and I live now and I have to admit I kind of miss being able to buy slightly defective (but namebrand!) shit for $2 a pop.
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The only time I was ever in there they were trying to sell shirts with either large holes in them or what appeared to be bloodstains. I have never returned.
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I had a boyfriend once who spend a LOT of time looking in the mirror and asking things like “do my traps look bigger?” One day he looked over his massive traps and there was a praying mantis, staring back. He screamed like a little girl. I laughed so hard I had to go home and change my pants.
And I love the little creepy crawlies on us. Do you know how much we need them? I had to use a topical antibiotic on my head once that was so strong it killed all my mites. My eyelashes fell out. The mites keep your follicles healthy and operating. Them and the other 7,999 species that live on the human organism.
You’re welcome, back.
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YOUR EYELASHES FELL OUT???? Okay, mites, y’all can stay.
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And would it help to cook and eat the cicadas for revenge? I tried to find the link to the festival that has a cicada cook-off, but I can’t. In the process, though, I found this link to six ways to cook them at home. Chocolate covered? Cicada on a stick?
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/gutcheck/2011/06/cicadas_st_louis_eat_bugs.php
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you just made it WORSE.
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I get the disheveled shelves thing. It’s not a fear, but I get deeply uneasy in any shop that doesn’t have multiples of the same thing. Marshalls, TJ Maxx, Ross, thrift stores, you name it. It’s like — if there’s only one of those, I don’t want it. Something’s wrong with it. TAKE IT AWAY….AAAHHHH! Perhaps due to my competitive nature I have no problem with Black Friday or grabbing the last item on a regular store shelf.
I don’t know what it’s called, but I have a fear of objects falling. If you want to fuck me up mentally, hold your purse or camera or whatever over a railing. I will end up whimpering in a fetal position or just running away from you (not proud, but I’ve done that to people who stick their camera out into space to take pictures — aaaahhhh!).
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hmmm… the objects thing I kinda get, I just never thought about it. Great, chalk up another weird fear!
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Dolls with teeth–Oh, I just shuddered involuntarily. Ventriloquist dummies are the worst. I have no midget fear, having gone to elementary school with an honest-to-god proportional dwarf. His name was Valden Rowell, I shit you not, and he was tiny and . . . come to think of it, looked a lot like a doll with teeth. Oh, fuck. So glad I didn’t realize that back then.
Pigeons. Oh, my fucking gawd, pigeons! I hate those cocksuckers. Domestic fowl I’m okay with, but any other birds–Uh, no. Have you SEEN “The Birds”?
I’m not afraid of any bugs, rodents, reptiles, or amphibians. I would not have survived my childhood if I had been, since I had three brothers and 17 male cousins who would have liked nothing more than to torment me with a creepy crawly.
Disheveled anything makes me have an anxiety attack. Does that count as fear? I work in a fabric store, and when the fabric is all out of place and the buttons are all jumbled, I have to take extra Xanax.
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EXACTLY — disordered anything makes me hyperventilate! And you know pigeons are evil, they have red eyes. They’re cicadas with feathers.
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Clowns… like the one in Poltergeist. Even as a grown-ass man, that scene still skeeves me out.
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I fast forward through it or leave the room. Who gives a kid a freaky-ass doll like that? They deserved to be ghosted.
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ok, y’all, I have such an irrational fear of wet bread such as bread pudding, that when I see it, I actually throw up in my mouth a little and get the heeby-jeebies. all becuz someone once tried to give me a cup of milk with a slice of white bread shoved in the cup…..excuse me, gotta go barf now, blech.
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I will not EAT bread pudding, but it’s not so much a fear as a preference. However, if my sandwich bread is in any way damp (like it touched the pickle and got pickle juice on it) I can’t eat it.
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Wow. I also have a wet bread issue. My best friend in high school/jr. high would put bread in her soup instead of crackers. Like, plain old white bread – not the crispy kind – and it would turn in to this mush, a thing that was no longer soup, and it still haunts my dreams.
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Hate bugs. Hate them with the white hot hate a fat kid has for gym class.
And midgets freak me right the hell out. Also dolls with those moveable eyes. Oh, and Sean Penn. He’s the creepiest thing of all.
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Sean Penn may be the creepiest-looking living person in the world. Possibly because of that smelled-a-fart face he’s always making, like a bargain-basement DeNiro.
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and that thing on his neck that isn’t always there!
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So I finally looked up those nutcracker dolls, they’re evil. we don’t have them here thank fuck.
I mostly like bugs, even cockroaches don’t bother me, unless they get in my hair. Once they get into my hair and cling there, it’s not an interesting little critter, it’s a torment from hell that’s trying to climb into my ear…
I hate arachnids. My own Mama hates ‘things with no legs’, slugs and snails and snakes…
The little microscopic things are cool – I like to think of things at their scale, and how we would be like a giant city, or planet that they live their lives in, doing their little mite business…
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now I want a microscope — is it weird that I picture Miteopolis like the city from the Jetsons? And if I got a roach in my hair, I would shave my head.
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We have these beetles here.. kind of like cicadas, but the fuckers HISS at you!!! And they’re not scared. Oh no. On the contrary, they’ll sit there and hiss at you until you cave. And they’re really crunchy and hard to squish. Hate. Hate. Hate.
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bugs are bad, badass bugs are WORSE. And anything that crunches when you stomp on it makes me throw up in my mouth a little… especially if it makes an audible NOISE.
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And those caroling singers that East Coast Auntie does her house in for Christmas. They look like they are all trying to suck out your soul. And bird tongues. For God’s sake – why do they need tongues? Especially when they stick them out at you and hiss.
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I think part of the problem with bird tongues is that they’re not tongue-colored. Almost EVERYTHING ELSE has a pink tongue, get with the program! And those dolls SUUUUUUCK.
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