Somewhere In There Is the Reason I Never Leave the House

Fear is a topic that has fascinated mankind since at least 1933, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt told the U.S. in his inaugural address that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Well, as usual, FDR must have been too busy building up a tax-fueled liberal nanny state to do his research, because people have always been irrationally terrified of all kinds of crazy stuff, and the proof is everywhere. Refer, for example, to this online list of phobias, the link to which was helpfully emailed to me by a coworker, in a spirit of lively intellectual exchange, around 3:30 on a recent Monday afternoon.

Now, by way of a disclaimer, I think a couple of the phobias are identified incorrectly. To take an obvious example, "dinophobia" should not be labeled the fear of whirlpools, but rather the far awesomer fear of dinosaurs. (Which is a far more justifiable phobia as well: How many people throughout history have been hunted down and messily devoured by whirlpools? Right, I thought so.) And I don't have time to look this up, but I'm pretty sure that what they've called the fear of the color purple, "porphyrophobia," is actually the fear of being strangled with your own hair. But generally the list appears to be legit.

And taken as truth, this catalog might cast an icy light upon the secret terrors of your soul. For one, there is apparently a fear of the Walloons called "Walloonphobia." You might want to brace your nerves, take a deep look inside yourself, and ask if this is the reason you haven't been to southern Belgium recently.