What's Your Phobia?

Most people who know me associate my work with ophidiophobia.

Know that one?

The fear, of snakes.
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Ophidia is quite a story herself, but it's true. I have a better track record than any shrink - getting people over the need to kill beneficial wildlife just because it hearkens to a learned childhood fear.

But I had one of my own.
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Do you have spheksophobia? I sure did.

Make no mistake, I had a deep-seated, active one. I had knocked down a nest with my back, crawling under the awning atop a swingset, when I was 8. I got nine stings down my back. My whole life, I swatted, sprayed and vilified wasps. Not bees, though they gave me the willies too and I did discourage their proximity to me.

But an amazing new friend named Howard Garrett, known far and wide (syndicated radio show) as "The Dirt Doctor" (he helped me finally live up to my last name) perhaps the foremost voice in organic gardening and tree care in the US, taught me something about wasps.

By the way, Howard's site is a gold mine. The library is free to access at www.dirtdoctor.com - and for every toxic pesticide, chemical fertilizer, or heinous weed-killer, there is an alternative that supports the biological activity in the soil, and nurtures the circle of life that is the living system around us.

So Howard taught me that wasps are beneficial, and like snakes, they will leave you alone - if they perceive that you are returning the favor. They eat and control things we don't want in abundance.

And it occurred to me, what kind of epic hypocrite AM I, if I consistently encourage people to overcome their learned childhood phobia of snakes, and I can't rise above mine about wasps?

So it was, that I resolved to make peace, with wasps. Nature seemed to say, "Oh yeah? Really mean it?" and there were THREE paper wasp nests under the eaves of my front porch that year.

I didn't spray them, I didn't swat at them. For a whole summer, I said good morning every morning and goodnight every evening.

By the end of the summer, they could land on my shoulder - and I did not do The Ninja Dance.

It was incredibly empowering, and it also calmed my heebie-jeebies about bees and spiders and whatever other arthropods I encounter. And what's more? The wasps seemed to say, "This one's okay," and they haven't nested under my porch eaves since. That was five years ago.

Got a phobia? It's a gift waiting to happen. Conquer it.

Speaking of phobias, my very favorite, given that I am the World's Only Prestidigitating Herpetological Humorist, is
Hippopottomonstrosesquippedeliaphobia.

It is, in fact, the longest word for any phobia - and I find it utterly delicious that it refers to the fear - of long words.

Yep. think about it. English can be cruel indeed.

"Lisp" is very hard to say if you have one, "Dyslexia" is difficult to read even if you don't - and anyone who suffers from Hippopottomonstrosesquippedeliaphobia - would have a stroke just trying to pronounce it.