Good morning! It’s 7:00 AM on a wonderfully brisk Saturday, October 18th, 2025. Let’s grab some coffee.
Growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, when I think about phobias that aren’t my own, my mind often goes to Lucy van Pelt from Peanuts. In several shows and in the comic strip, she’d set up a little booth and charged her peers a nickel for psychiatric advice. But instead of actual advice, she’d rattle off a list of different phobias. I found that fascinating as a kid: “If you have this, it’s such-and-such a phobia; if you have that, it’s such-and-such a phobia,” and so on. Lucy, my second-favorite Peanuts character after Schroeder, had quite a lucrative business going. She really liked nickels. And that brings me to last night.
Last night, I was lying in bed watching YouTube, as I always do before I go to sleep. This is a routine I often have—I just go down the random list of suggested videos until I get tired and fall asleep—that’s my usual M.O. Back to last night—I started seeing some ambient videos and other random stuff, and then I discovered I have another phobia! I now have two or three phobias, which I won’t disclose because they’re phobias. (Those of you close to me pretty much know what they are and thankfully don’t tease me with them.) Anyway, I discovered this new phobia, and I looked it up and thought, “God, what a weird name!” The moment I saw some images of this new thing I’m afraid of, I was like, “Oh my God, okay, I need to take melatonin, relax, meditate, just so I can fall asleep.”
I was also aware this new thing made me uneasy, but I didn’t know it was an actual, categorized phobia on Lucy’s list—I certainly do now. <comic relief time>
It’s sort of silly because it’s one of those phobias where you’re not sure why you’re afraid of it, but you’re still afraid of it. From what I understand in all my years of dealing with phobias, there can be several different factors involved. Believe it or not, it could be something genetic, the way you were raised by your parents, something that traumatized you—it could be several different things. So I dug into this new thing, trying to figure out why, and I just can’t put my finger on it. It has nothing to do with my parents, and it’s nothing I remember being a traumatic experience, other than that it’s really hard for me to pinpoint.
The research took me back to when I was a kid, in the fourth or fifth grade, in the school library’s reference section. I came across a book about UFOs and took it up to the librarian. I told her, “This book is in the reference section, nonfiction; it should be in the fiction section.” She replied, “No, no, it belongs in the reference section.” I was like, “What?” So for an entire weekend, I was terrified of UFOs. I kept looking up at the sky and everything, and eventually, it just calmed down, and one day I just wasn’t afraid of them anymore, I guess. That’s kind of what I’m talking about. Why was I afraid of them? Was I afraid of dying? Kidnapping? World destruction? Am I afraid of Orson Welles coming through on my radio telling me that I’m going to die? I don’t know. That’s kind of where my brain went. (And no, extraterrestrials and UFOs are not one of my phobias.) I think I have three, and they’re really no big deal. I mean, they don’t make me dysfunctional or anything unless I’m forced to experience them.
Anyway, phobias are really interesting. It’s like we are all afraid of something, but we don’t want to be afraid of anything, and we definitely don’t want other people to know we’re afraid of certain things—most of us, I guess. Some of us, I don’t know. I am not a psychiatrist, but I did play one on Dungeons & Dragons last night. LOL (I don’t play D&D anymore.) So after looking into this this morning, I thought to myself, “You know what, this would make a really good coffee time post!” So here we are. Right now, all I have to do is think about a couple of these images, and it’s like… cringe. I mean, super cringe, mega cringe, oh my God, cringe…as my Granddaughters would say.
In closing-
So as we go out into the world, on this beautiful Saturday, think about the things that you’re afraid of. Are you really afraid of them? If you don’t like flying, don’t fly. If you don’t like water, don’t swim. I mean, it’s okay to have fears; it’s okay to have things in life that you’re working on. Anxiety is a natural part of us all. It’s just that for some people, it’s at higher sensitivity levels, like me.
-There are some things one would think I should have a phobia of, but I actually don’t—like spiders. I keep 14 tarantulas as exotic pets. I know, I know…
Coming down to it, remembering that I’m not a psychiatrist, I think we are all on a spectrum of something; we’re all on a scale of something. We all have suffered our fair share of joy, laughter, fear, and pain, and we’re all our own unique recipe of human beings. I try to go with that. I’m not trying to say I’m much different than a lot of other people out there who have phobias or anxiety. It’s something in me that’s naturally occurring; I have tools to keep it from being debilitating.
All right, Happy Saturday! It’s autumn. Go buy a pumpkin or something. Go grab some pumpkin spice things. And y’all have a good one. I probably won’t do coffee time tomorrow because Sunday is my reset day. So be good to each other, respect each other, and have a good day out there. Stay at home. Carve that pumpkin you got! Oh! It’s pumpkin soup season!
Have a good one, y’all.
Peace,
Love,
Mark.